Earlier today, I posted Daniel Denvir’s article about the death of a 12-year-old who was having an asthma attack. The school in Philadelphia has a nurse only two days a week, and that day there was none.

This reader comments:

“I knew that this would happen. I taught in Phila for years and am now retired. Poor children seem to have high incidences of chronic ailments. Asthma is one. These children often share their inhalers with the rest of their families as the medications for asthma are quite expensive. Their diseases are not as well managed so they go into crisis more often than children who are able to keep up with the costs of the disease. Make no mistake. People die from asthma. The reason we don’t hear about that happening very often is that for most the medical establishment can manage it quite effectively, but it is expensive.

I have two stories. In one school, the nurse, who is excellent and has vast experience as an er nurse as well, made the call to send for a child’s parent’s due to the severity of that child’s asthma. Someone who was not a nurse decided that child should not go home. Thankfully the nurse knew it was her call and she did not have to listen to anyone else, including a principal to make that kind of decision. What if the nurse wasn’t there. What would have happened to that child.

My second story is this. Phila schools were taken over by the state over a decade ago. We are all aware that among all of the other cuts, there was to be only one nurse for every 1500 kids. That meant that there were schools that did not have any nurses. The pronouncement from on high was that each principal was to appoint a teacher to be the nurse, and that if a teacher did not take that job, they were to be written up as insubordinate. Thankfully there were some principals who had the brains to understand that this was a very dangerous call. I don’t know if that rule still applies, but I know that there are still not enough nurses and am very surprised that many more children have not either died or been hospitalized due to this ignorant and callous policy.

Kids go outside and fall or hit their heads all the time. What layman knows the signs of a
traumatic head injury? How can a teacher tell if a child’s asthma warrants a visit to the emergency room? What if an adult in the school is having a stroke and the nurse is the only one to recognize the signs.(it happened).”