State panel recommends more school nurses
A state committee tasked with looking at public school financing Thursday began churning out recommendations, including one for more school nurses.
Georgia ranks 46th in the nation in school nurse funding.
The committee, comprised of legislators, educators and businesspeople, proposed phasing in changes that would:
-- Boost the ratio of school nurses from 1 per 2,300 students to 1 per 750 students in elementary schools and 1 per 1,500 students in middle and high schools (costing the state an extra $10 million a year when fully implemented in 2015).
-- Give each school $200 a year (total cost statewide: $500,000) to cover adhesive bandages and other supplies -- expenses currently picked up by many local PTAs.
-- Make the state a 50-50 partner on the basic school nurse program. Currently, school nurses cost $56 million, $26 million of which is covered by the state.
The committee, created earlier this year by the General Assembly, is looking at a wide range of issues, including whether to tweak or throw out the state’s decades-old basic school funding formula that is part of the Quality Basic Education Act. A first round of recommendations could go to the Legislature in January, and others would come out before the 2013 session.
Some have been skeptical about the final outcome of the committee’s mission, given the state's finances and the work of five previous committees that legislative staff has said essentially went nowhere.
State Senate Education Committee Chairman Fran Millar, R-Atlanta, said some policy changes will be coming.
“We’re not doing this to have nothing happen,” Millar said after Thursday’s marathon committee meeting. “We just have to be smarter because we have less to work with.”
Committee members were unanimous in their support for more school nurses, saying one result should be better attendance, a critical component of raising student achievement.
Forsyth County School Superintendent L.C. “Buster” Evans, a member of the committee, said school nurses have remained a local priority, even through all the budget cutting.
“To be frank, I would be scared to death to operate a school system without quality nurses,” Evans said.
Other committee recommendations would shift responsibility for keeping up with home school students from local school systems to the state Department of Education and would do away with the requirement that school systems put 65 percent of their state funding into the classroom.
Former Gov. Sonny Perdue had championed the 65 percent rule, saying it would result in more classroom resources for teachers and give students "the best opportunity to reach their fullest potential."
