This article is published in partnership with TexasTribune.org.
Çpraying as a school nurse is “not just ice and boo-boos”.
That’s how Marisa Thomison, a primary school nurse in the Hutto Independent School District, explains her profession, which became a crucial component of public health during the pandemic. At Veterans ‘Hill Elementary School, she manages students’ medical histories, administers medications, offers health education and tries to prevent COVID-19 from spreading widely among students and staff.
Among his tasks: keeping parents and teachers calm when he calls to say that they have been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Thomison said that she and her colleagues were “cursed” and even physically threatened by parents who are scared and frustrated by having to keep their children at home for weeks.
“It’s the immediate one, ‘Oh my God, I have a job. How can I have someone to look after my child? What am I going to do? ‘”Said Thomison.
Unlike their colleagues at the COVID-19 hospital units, school nurses did not have to care for terminally ill patients. They are working on the frontline of the pandemic in a different way: tracking who has been exposed to the virus, testing employees and students who show symptoms and diagnosing signs of anxiety in traumatized students.
Thomison is one of 13 nurses in her school district, which makes her lucky. Texas law does not require public schools to have full-time nurses, and many do not. In 2019-2020, more than 8,000 public schools in Texas employed about 6,100 full-time school nurses, according to state data.
State Representative Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, filed a bill in this legislative session to require all districts to hire at least one full-time nurse per school and maintain a ratio of at least one full-time nurse to every 750 enrolled students. Hiring more nurses would cost the districts or the state, and Thierry said he was still unsure how much.
“These are essential workers, so it is a cost that we can no longer cut. Even the life of a lost child would be tragic, ”she said.
Similar projects have failed in previous sessions, but the coronavirus pandemic has shown the extent and importance of school nurses’ work. Without a health worker trained to track how the virus spread on campuses, schools are less able to prevent major outbreaks, said Becca Harkleroad, defense coordinator for the Texas School Nurses Organization and a nurse at Lake Travis ISD.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like not to have a nurse at this time. Often, it is up to the reception staff to look after the children and send home children who may be sick, ”she said. The advocacy group is also asking the state to track how many schools have nurses and whether they are covering more than one campus, a current gap in available state data. And it is defending a bill introduced by state senator Beverly Powell, D-Burleson, which would allow schools to use the money previously allocated to school security to pay for additional nurses.
The only nurse in the 320-student Marfa ISD school, Beverly Dutchover, takes action after a parent or teacher reports a positive COVID-19 case. She asks who they had lunch with, tracks class times, and calls dozens of parents. Sometimes, if more than one person in a small classroom is positive, she closes the entire classroom and requires everyone to stay at home and quarantine for two weeks.
In the fall and early winter, tourists crowding Marfa and Big Bend National Park increased cases of COVID-19 and overburdened local hospital capacity. Cases among students and teachers at Marfa ISD rose to around 15 in October, before falling again. Now that Governor Greg Abbott has revoked the state’s mask mandate, Dutchover fears that cases will increase again.
“It bothered me. I was saddened to think that, especially with all these nurses and doctors who work so hard to keep people alive in hospitals, he went and did that, ”said Dutchover of the governor’s decision.
This spring, the state gave school boards the power to choose not to require masks on their campuses, which could make the work of some school nurses even more challenging.
Related: A city in Texas, two school districts, conflicting mask policies: how science and politics collided in New Braunfels classrooms
Debates about which security policies are necessary for face-to-face learning have fragmented some school communities, with 56% of students learning face-to-face in January. Marfa ISD will continue to require masks, but some school districts have already chosen not to use them. Dutchover knows that even though students and teachers wear masks on campus, they cannot wear them while hanging out with friends or doing chores, increasing the risk of transmission.
Masks indoors are crucial to preventing the virus from spreading, experts say, and school nurses know from experience. Tracy Ayers, a district nurse in rural Caldwell ISD, recalled when about five players on the women’s football team tested positive for COVID-19. When tracking the contact, she learned that the outbreak originated from a close contact on a school bus: The girls were eating without masks. On the other hand, football coaches insisted that their players wear masks and sit far from each other on the bus, and the season yielded few cases.
“When I see relaxed behavior when wearing masks, in particular, I tend to see cases that will increase,” she said.
At the beginning of the school year, about half of Caldwell ISD students were learning in person. Now, almost everyone is. The district school board will likely hear public comments after the spring break from community members who advocate canceling the mask order.
“Even when going to one of the local supermarkets, some wear masks and some don’t,” said Ayers. “I understand where parents come from, in the sense that they want normalcy for their children. Where I come from as a health professional and seeing how well the masks are working, I want your children at school and I want them to be healthy ”.
The symptoms of the pandemic go beyond the purely physical. Thomison noticed an increase in anxiety between staff and students. Recently, a student came into her office for the second day in a row, concerned about her symptoms. Before the pandemic, Thomison would have sat on the stretcher next to the student, found him at eye level and convinced him to open up. Now, she had to sit two meters away in a chair, fully equipped with goggles and a mask. The student ended up confessing that he was afraid to get COVID-19 because a relative had it, and Thomison calmed them down.
She felt the tension in the distance between her and the student. “We cannot do for our students as we normally would. Our work can bring a lot of comfort, but it won’t calm anyone’s true fears, ”she said. “I can’t breastfeed as I’m used to, because we have security restrictions. … It’s a big toll. We are trying, but we are also feeling the effects. “
Aliyya Swaby is a public education reporter in the Texas Tribune, the only member-supported non-partisan media organization that prioritizes digital, which informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and state issues.
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