It is my understanding that schools should provide as much care as they can to students. Whether that be educational care or health assistance. When Gov. Tom Corbett slashed the school district's budget leading to dangerously understaffed schools, many schools were left without essential employees such as nurses.
Due to a shortage of nurses in Bryant Elementary School, a little girl named Laporshia Massey died of asthma complications. The school had only one nurse who was there two days a week. The day Massey died was not one of those days.
The parents are outraged, and rightly so. While the school was unable to supply a nurse, shouldn't someone have called paramedics as soon as Massey complained of breathing difficulties? Now there are so many questions floating around. What happened in school that day? What were the present staff doing? Were they following protocol? A more thorough investigation should give us the answers to those questions.
Apparently, Bryant Elementary was severely understaffed last year, as well. According to the article in CityPaper, a protesting nurse warned that other staff members in the school were not competent enough to deal with asthmatic students. The District source in the article said that her life could have been saved had staff responded appropriately to her illness.
Does that mean produce a nurse out of thin air? No. It means calling 911. Isn't that what they teach you in elementary school? I remember lessons on how to call 911. The staff should have been setting that example in this real-life emergency. I remember attendants in the cafeteria being trained in CPR and how to handle other health emergencies. I guess none of the faculty that day knew what to do. That's scary to parents. Parents and students should be scared after this. I would be.
This budget crisis has led to a child's death. Massey was only in elementary school. That's one more child carelessly killed by a seriously deprived system. A child and potentially great mind has been lost at the hands of Tom Corbett. People should be taking to the streets for change.
Thanks to Corbett, the school district has 3,000 fewer staff members than it did in June. Currently, there are 179 nurses working in public, private and parochial schools, down from 289 in 2011.
Don't impoverished families already have it hard enough getting sufficient health care for their children? Maybe our country spends too much on useless crap to be able to afford education anymore. Too bad politicians will never experience the death of a child due to understaffed schools because they send their kids to rich private schools. Maybe if Corbett lost a kid to staff incompetence, he'd think twice about cutting education funding.
