Education Law

California law puts school kids with diabetes in a bind

The Sacramento Bee reports that a state court has ruled that a state law prohibits school personnel other than nurses from administering insulin injections to students with diabetes. Nurses associations successfully sued over a 2007 rule that allowed other trained staff to administer shots. That rule, in turn, had come out of a 2005 lawsuit from the opposite direction: parents who said the nurses-only rule and the shortage of nurses meant they were keeping their diabetic children out of school or having to leave work to come give the shots themselves. Details on that now invalidated agreement, from the Ventura County Star and NSBA's Legal Clips, are here.

This is the latest development in a what is a big, nationwide issue of nursing services in schools. This article from the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago focuses on the fact that Illinois law does not require nurses in every school. But the Associated Press reports that Iowa's law requiring them is causing financial hardships for some school districts, 38 of which have applied for waivers. The Arizona Republic reports that budget cuts are affecting the ability of school districts to provide nurses in that state, which is not among the dozen or so with such legal mandates. And Minnesota's Savage Pacer reports on concerns in the Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools about nurses being spread too thin.

Certainly BoardBuzz doesn't dispute that nowadays, when public schools are serving children who have severe disabilities and health conditions in the least restrictive educational environment, the needs are greater than ever. After all, how many times have we ourselves pointed out that the federal bean-counters finally needs to stop trying to stick it to school kids by cutting Medicaid funding—that they need to catch up with the reality that the activities and services schools are required to use to serve all children aren't frills. Nurses aren't luxuries, either. In an ideal world, who wouldn't prefer a school nurse in every school?

But the budget news from all over—including California, Illinois, Iowa, Arizona, and Minnesota—sounds the same theme. Just as fiscal realities mean some school boards may need to think about unfamiliar options like having one highly qualified teacher and several highly qualified paraprofessionals teach larger groups of students, it may be that school boards will need more, not less, flexibility in figuring out how to provide for things like insulin injections.

And for federal and state policy-makers—who, after all, are also making the tough budget and tax decisions that in the end affect schools—that means setting less, not more, prescriptive rules for how schools get the job done.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on November 18, 2008 (boomark / email).