VALLEY REPORT / SCHOOL LAYOFFS : Slicing Health Staff to Cure Sick Budget May Put Students at Risk

The Los Angeles school district calls these employees “non-essential.”

But for many of the district’s 625,000 students, the more than 600 district health professionals who received layoff notices in March are the only source of medical care because their families cannot afford insurance.

At a school-run clinic on the San Fernando High School campus, for example, 70% of the students who seek help have no health insurance. At Sun Valley Junior High School, “I have anywhere from 50 to 100 kids a day coming through my office,” said nurse Marlene Lovett, who is being reassigned to teaching duty.

“Without these people, what are we supposed to do?” asked a San Fernando Valley woman whose 7-year-old son is in a district-sponsored counseling program for children with aggressive behavior. One of his counselors, Rusanna Rowles, got a layoff notice after three years with the district.

“When they first told me that they weren’t going to have it anymore, it was so unreal because finally I found something” that helped her son, the mother said. “And all of a sudden it’s being taken away.” She fears that if the counseling program is cut, her son will return to his old pattern of beating up children he thinks are making fun of him.

District health officials say cutting back on health care will mean that a variety of problems, from broken bones to depression to violent behavior, may go undetected or uncorrected. And that will put even greater burdens on the already overloaded health care and criminal justice systems, they say.

Overall, the district plans to cut about half of its nurses, counselors, psychologists, audiometrists, optometrists and other health-care professionals. If the school board approves the cuts, only the neediest children, such as the severely handicapped, would have access to school nurses, said Virginia Hayes, director of district nursing services.

Presently, nurses visit elementary schools an average of once a week, and nurses are assigned full time to the larger junior high schools and to all high schools.

The health workers are among the more than 2,100 district employees, classified as non-essential, who face layoffs or reassignment to help alleviate a $341-million budget shortfall during the next budget year. Targeted along with health-care workers are librarians and teachers in physical education, music, social studies, reading, and vocational and industrial arts.

The district warned the employees in March that they could be terminated or reassigned because the state, which funds the district, is wrestling with a deficit of nearly $13 billion in the next fiscal year. Final layoff notices must be sent by Wednesday. The budget cuts must be approved by the school board and would not become final until June 30, the end of the present budget year.

So far, about half of the 93 school nurses who serve the 162 elementary and junior high schools in the Valley have received layoff notices, said Ginny Benander, field coordinator for district nurses in the Valley. Districtwide, 272 out of a total of 450 nurses face layoffs, officials said.

In addition, 45 of the 75 school psychologists who work in the district’s Valley elementary and junior high schools received layoff letters, said Paul Carr, who oversees district psychologists in the Valley. Overall, the district plans to cut 224 psychologists out of 410, said Tom Killeen, district administrator for personnel services and research.

District health officials predict devastating consequences if the school board approves the cuts. They cite hundreds of examples, from the life-threatening to the mundane, of health workers coming to the aid of students and teachers alike:

* Recently a despondent girl at a Valley high school attempted suicide on campus, slashing her arms. The girl survived and, through the district’s psychiatric social workers, was enrolled in a therapy program. The girl remains in treatment.

* Rowles recalled a recent case of a 7-year-old Valley girl with a speech disorder who refused to board the school bus. The girl, who recently moved and was having difficulty adjusting to her new school, stomped and screamed every time the school bus came by her house to pick her up, according to Rowles. Counseling was arranged and now the girl rides the bus.

* Last week, school counselors helped children and teachers cope with the death of a popular Pacoima Junior High School music teacher.

On a broader level, health workers throughout the district worry that a shortage of nurses will hamper detection of communicable diseases, such as measles, mumps and tuberculosis, in time to prevent epidemics. All students entering the district must prove that their immunizations are up-to-date. If they aren’t, district nurses administer the shots.

“That’s why the nurse is so instrumental,” said Tritia Chicagus, communicable disease coordinator for the district. “If a disease is rampant in the community, we want to make sure we take care of our kids to make sure they don’t get it.”

Last year, for example, nurses screened 51,500 students for exposure to the bacillus that causes tuberculosis, Chicagus said. More than 8,300 students tested positive and were referred to county health officials for medication, she said.

Other common ailments may also go unnoticed if nurses are cut.

“There are very few places where schoolchildren can go and get an eye exam that doesn’t cost very much,” said Dr. Helen Hale, director of student medical services for the district. “It would be a tragedy if the kids were to be cut out from that.

“I just can’t believe they are going to do it,” said Hale, who got a layoff notice herself in March.

Carr worries about budget cuts that would eliminate crisis counselors who help students cope with shootings, suicides and other tragedies. “We hardly have enough to cover the needs in the Valley as it is,” he said.

But district officials say they have no choice but to eliminate the positions because of the state budget deficit. The district decided that teachers in some areas, such as bilingual education, English and science, would not be laid off. District officials determined terminations and reassignments largely by seniority.

Under a worst-case scenario, Hayes said, the majority of students in the district will have to manage without nurses altogether. That means the job of tending to ill or injured children will fall on the school secretary or a teacher with training in first aid.

In serious cases, school employees may have to call parents to take their children to a doctor or will have to tend to the child until an ambulance arrives.