Nurses Face Job Layoffs in Torrance School Crisis : Education: The school district, which must cut $2.6 million to balance its budget, is considering eliminating eight of 12 nursing positions to save money.

Ellie Zamos has been through this all before. She was working as a school nurse on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1978 when she was laid off, a victim of budget cuts resulting from Proposition 13.

But Zamos quickly found another job as a school nurse in Torrance, where she divides her time among three elementary schools.

Now, her job is endangered again.

On Valentine’s Day, her supervisor visited her to warn that major cuts are pending in next year’s budget for the Torrance Unified School District.

Eight of the district’s 12 school nurses could lose their jobs, and Zamos--despite 13 years with the district--is among them.

“I still feel kind of stunned by it,” Zamos said last week.

“Every year, the school district goes through big budget dilemmas, and every year, they look at the support staff first. But always, Torrance has been such an outstanding district because they value their nurses.”

This year in Torrance, however, the outlook is unusually grim because of expected cutbacks in state funding. Confronted with a budget deficit, the school will meet Monday night to attempt to carve $2.6 million from its $79.6-million budget for 1991-92.

One proposal calls for saving $240,000 by laying off the eight nurses and replacing them with 15 or 16 part-time health aides, a step that has been taken by other districts in the South Bay and around the state.

Other proposed cuts include increasing class sizes for grades four through 12, abolishing the vocal music program for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and cutting a number of teaching, clerical and administrative jobs.

If the nursing jobs are cut, the four remaining nurses would work with the health aides to provide mandated programs, such as vision, hearing and scoliosis screening, at the district’s 28 schools. The aides would each work 15 hours a week, earning from $7.64 to $9.28 an hour.

That would reduce the annual cost of the nurse program from $449,000 to about $209,000, district spokesman J. Richard Ducar said.

Details of the health aides’ qualifications have not been firmed up, but Ducar said the aides would do “paperwork activities, keeping school records and working very closely with the nurses.” He said the aides might be similar to the “health clerks” in the Glendale Unified School District, who have been given training in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

In California, school nurses are required to have a bachelor’s degree, a fifth year of education--either a master’s degree or health-related experience--and a registered nurse’s license.

Michele Harris, who is the nurse for four Torrance schools, said she is puzzled by how these new health aides could substitute for eight registered nurses.

“We are professional nurses. We all have bachelor’s degrees,” she said. “We have a credential in school nursing. We have been taught what’s involved in learning.” Harris herself has two bachelor’s degrees, in sociology and nursing, and eight years’ experience as a school nurse.

The issue confronting Torrance trustees is whether the district can still afford the traditional school nurse--a qualified professional who performs a myriad of roles, providing everything from hearing and eye tests to health education.

The same question is being faced by an increasing number of California schools, said Skip Daum, legislative advocate for the California School Nurses Organization in Sacramento.

“I’m noticing . . . there is an increasing frequency of calls: ‘They’re about ready to cut the nurses out of this district. What can we do?’ It’s because school boards are pressed” for money, Daum said.

On Monday, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, where Zamos was laid off 13 years ago, is scheduled to act on a plan to reduce its seven nursing positions to three to save $208,000. The 9,000-student district already has part-time health aides at each of its eight elementary schools.

More nurses may lose their jobs in the ABC Unified School District, covering Cerritos, Artesia and Hawaiian Gardens. The school board there voted Feb. 12 to save $270,000 by cutting the equivalent of seven full-time nursing positions from a total of 19.

The threat of layoffs is nothing new for school nurses. Many of them lost their jobs after Proposition 13 was passed, said Susan Lordi, consultant for school health programs with the Los Angeles County Office of Education and president of the National Assn. of School Nurses.

In the ‘60s, Lordi said, many nurses were responsible for just one or two schools, but today’s school nurses rarely have that luxury. In most schools, she said, a nurse may be on hand only one day a week or one day every two weeks.

In fact, at many schools, the principal’s secretary--or even the principal--is the person commonly taking children’s temperatures and applying Band-Aids to minor injuries.

Some parents, remembering their own childhood schools, assume a nurse is on duty at their children’s schools every day.

“I get calls from parents who have just found out the school nurse isn’t there very often, and they’re aghast,” said Jacqui A. Smith, consultant for health and nutrition programs at the state Department of Education in Sacramento.

The current cutbacks come at a time when many school-age children are wrestling with serious health-related problems, health officials said.

The Torrance nurses say they have the training to recognize and treat children who are being sexually abused at home or who are suffering emotional problems, misusing drugs or recovering from a parent’s death.

“The health office has always been a place where children can come and not be judged. They can come and know that they have an advocate,” Zamos said.

Besides conducting state-mandated testing for vision, hearing and scoliosis, school nurses provide health education and counseling, offer first aid and maintain health records for each student.

Zamos said she doubts the health aides would be able to perform most of those functions.

“They may call them health aides, but they wouldn’t have a health background.”

Frida Martinez, health coordinator with the Glendale Unified School District, said health aides have worked successfully there for many years. She said the aides have been trained to evaluate immunization records and to perform first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

The aides have been well-accepted by Glendale students, Martinez said, but she and others caution that the jobs of a nurse and an aide are not interchangeable.

Since 1984, health aides have been working with nurses in a special program serving the Redondo Union High School District and the three elementary school districts in Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach. The program, funded by the South Bay Hospital District, was launched after the districts had to cut back their nursing staffs, said James Tehan, the program administrator. The nurses and aides work together as a team, he said.

The program has four nurses serving about 10,000 students in the four districts, the same number of nurses who would be serving the 19,600 Torrance students if the cuts are approved.

Told about the Torrance plan to hire health aides, Tehan cautioned, “If they’re going to do it, there’s got to be a commitment to hiring good people and giving good training.”

Smith, the state health consultant, notes there are no state guidelines for training a health aide. Some aides, in fact, have no training at all in first aid, she said, and a district could face liability problems if an employee without medical training provided the wrong medical advice.

In Sacramento, Daum warns districts that are eyeing a switch from nurses to aides that they will not get the same skilled care.

“It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish,” he said.

But cash-strapped Torrance school officials say that after having made deep cuts totaling $2.8 million in 1990, there are no easy choices left.

The nursing program might draw support from some board members, said Torrance school trustee John Eubanks, but he added that the board’s rationale has been to make cuts as far from the classroom as possible.

“Obviously,” Eubanks said, “this is our third round of budget cuts and we are getting closer and closer to the classroom.”

TRIMMING THE TORRANCE SCHOOLS BUDGET

The Torrance Unified School District is debating how to cut programs and jobs to save $2.3 million to $2.6 million in order to close a projected deficit in the district’s preliminary 1991-92 budget. The school board on Monday will select cutbacks -- which could include the elimination of eight of the district’s 12 nurses -- from among programs and staffing levels costing $3.2 million . Following is the list of staffing and program cuts being considered. Proposal: Change grades 9 to 12 teacher-student ratio from 1:27 to 1:28 (8 teacher positions saved) Amount saved: $260,000 OR Proposal: Change grades 9 to 12 teacher-student ratio from 1:27 to 1:29 (16 teacher positions saved) Amount saved: $520,000 Proposal: Change grades 7 to 8 teacher-student ratio from 1:27 to 1:28 (4 teacher positions saved) Amount saved: $136,000 OR Proposal: Change grades 7 to 8 teacher-student ratio from 1:27 to 1:29 (8 teacher positions saved) Amount saved: $272,000 Proposal: Reduce central office administration Amount saved: $100,000 Proposal: Reduce district office clerical staff (5 positions) Amount saved: $130,000 Proposal: Reduce district maintenance and operations (9 positions) Amount saved: $360,000 Proposal: Demote head custodians to custodians Amount saved: $10,000 Proposal: Abolish K-5 music program (4 teacher positions) Amount saved: $140,000 Proposal: Reduce number of 9th-grade English classes (4 teacher positions) Amount saved: $140,000 Proposal: Restructure home and hospital program Amount saved: $70,000 Proposal: Reduce special education staffing (1 adaptive P.E. teacher, plus supply support) Amount saved: $55,000 Proposal: Reduce psychology services (1 psychologist position) Amount saved: $60,000 Proposal: Moratorium on staff development Amount saved: $90,000 Proposal: Increase Shery High School class sizes (1 teacher position) Amount saved: $35,000 Proposal: Replace nurses with health assistants (8 nurse positions) Amount saved: $240,000 Proposal: Abolish language arts resource specialists (6 positions) Amount saved: $210,000 Proposal: Abolish ESL middle school positions (5 positions) Amount saved: $175,000 Proposal: Restructure high schools (4 administrators, 4 counselors, 2 librarians and some department heads) Amount saved: $332,000 Proposal: Reduction in 9-12 athletics Amount saved: $50,000 Proposal: Reduce data processing service Amount saved: $25,000 Proposal: Eliminate remaining high school transportation Amount saved: $20,000 Proposal: Change grade 4 to 6 teacher-student ratio from 1:33 to 1:34 (4 teacher positions) Amount saved: $140,000 SOURCE: Torrance Unified School District