Anonymous wrote:One hopes that Nesbitt's clumsy handling of this will help facilitate its demise...

Nesbitt needs to GO! I've never held DC government representatives in high esteem, but this lady was so out of touch with the people she supposedly serves it was breathtaking. Bowser needs to fire her and fire her fast.

One hopes that Nesbitt's clumsy handling of this will help facilitate its demise...

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who say call 911. Here's what's wrong with 911 in DC. This child's death scares me to no end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/choking-toddler-dies-after-dc-fails-to-dispatch-closest-paramedic-to-house/2015/03/19/1a5c8cce-ce5b-11e4-8a46-b1dc9be5a8ff_story.html

I don't understand how anyone can think that calling 911 and sending kids in an ambulance to the hospital more is a good idea.
It costs a lot, the kids spend less time in-seat learning, and it's a pretty screwed up day (or week) emotionally for the kids and parents.

For those of you who say call 911. Here's what's wrong with 911 in DC. This child's death scares me to no end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/choking-toddler-dies-after-dc-fails-to-dispatch-closest-paramedic-to-house/2015/03/19/1a5c8cce-ce5b-11e4-8a46-b1dc9be5a8ff_story.html

Good write up of the current state of play - but not hopeful this will be reversed

http://watchdog.org/280060/d-c-parents-officials-fight-potential-cuts-school-nurse-hours/

I used to work in an after school program. I was only with kids for three hours a day a few times a week, but I'd say at least once a month we had an incident of some kind or another. The school nurse was on-site until 430. After that, we were on our own. Tons or asthma attacks, bad enough to need nebulizing and evaluations by the nurse. A few accidental peanut exposures and epipen uses (those always went to 911.) One broken bone. And a few bonking head on playground equipment falling off chairs, etc. Most of it was minor league stiff, band aids, comforting... But the stuff that wasn't... I was so glad there was someone there who was trained to assess and recommend treatment!

But the asthma and epipen stuff. That wasn't minor. That's really serious. As the mother of an asthmatic child, I need to be able to trust my school can handle it.

David Grosso has introduced emergency legislation to put off the change: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/parents-slam-new-dc-schools-health-plan-that-could-reduce-nurse-coverage/2016/10/27/30de8d10-9b84-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html

There's something fishy with the way DOH turn the nurses contract into a grant...and then used the same pot of money ($19m) that used to be allocated solely to the nurses into four different programs (only one of which is nursing).

Watching the clip, it's amazing how Nesbitt twists herself in pretzels "if we determine every school requires 40 hours of nursing, they'll receive 40 hours"; "every school will receive the minimum coverage required by out analysis of the data"; "public doesn't understand what nurses are for"...

But even when pushed to the edge, she will not say that nurses are being cut.

are contractors, not 're contractors'

Ok - here's a solution.

DOH clearly wants out of the school nurse business and wants to focus on broader, pubic health issues. Fine.

Transfer the $ they have allocated to school nurses historically to OSSE which will assume the current contract (or negotiate a new one) with Children's Hospitals to hire and manage the nurses.

Charter LEAs and DCPS would get nurses from OSSE, rather than DOH.

Since all the nurses re contractors to DOH, does DOH really need to be involved at all?

[quote=JoshH]Here's a 10 minute clip from the end of the meeting that stands out to me. If you don't have five and a half hours to kill, I think this part is worth watching. If you're fired up after watching it, please email Mayor Bowser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNRC9r_J9XQ


edit: not sure why I can't embed it[/quote]

So, the meeting did not go well.