By Daniel Denvir

– A first-grade student died today after falling ill at Jackson Elementary School in South Philadelphia, where no school nurse was on duty. Philadelphia schools have suffered dramatic staffing cuts to nurses and other positions in recent years.

“We had a very tragic day at Jackson Elementary,” says School District of Philadelphia spokesperson Fernando Gallard. Gallard says that the boy showed signs of distress in the classroom and was given CPR by one of three trained adults in the classroom. They called 911 immediately and an ambulance arrived to take him to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he was pronounced dead an unknown time later.

The details of the boy’s condition (the student has not yet been identified) are unclear. But Ann Smigiel, Jackson’s nurse, worries that she might have been able to prevent it had she been on duty.
“There is no net for the staff or the children,” she says. “There’s no requirement to have any kind of medical team. It’s my job as the nurse to make sure there’s an emergency plan, and basically it is 911…The equipment isn’t there, nothing is there for them.”

Smigiel works at Jackson only on Thursdays and every other Friday. Until five years ago, Smigiel says that she was present at Jackson every single day. Smigiel says that she has worked at Jackson for 12 years, and worked for 15 years prior in an emergency room.

“If I were there would it have made a difference? I don’t know. But I’ve done CPR in the past and that little girl has a heart transplant now,” says Smigiel, who believes that student would have died had she not been present. “The benefit of having immediate medical care, immediate response, [and] clear decision-makers is absolutely a part of why she made it.”

Philadelphia public schools have long lacked necessary funding, but recent cuts by Gov. Tom Corbett have sent the District into an increasingly dire fiscal crises. As of last fall, there were 179 nurses working in public, private and parochial schools, down from 289 in 2011. In September, sixth-grader Laporshia Massey died of what her father described as an asthma attack after falling sick while no nurse was on duty at Bryant Elementary School. The death caused an outcry against school budget cuts, and Corbett soon released $45 million for the District that had been withheld on the condition of teachers union concessions. Corbett denied that the funding was related to Massey’s death.

School District Chief of Student Support Services Karyn Lynch says there will be psychologists and bereavement specialists at Jackson tomorrow. Many students will likely find out about the boy’s death when they arrive for school in the morning.

“This came completely out of the blue for the teaching staff as well as the students,” Lynch says. “Many of the students and certainly the teachers and the staff are very very upset about this.”

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan said he is “absolutely shaken” by the death, and says it marked “another example of another under-resourced school.”

Jordan said it was “very upsetting to lose another child and know the nurse wasn’t available in the building, who could have been there to assist him.”

Two other Jackson students have also died off campus in recent years, says Smigiel, one from street violence and another from asthma. The school has been hit hard.

“The kids that we service are dying and it’s wrong. And it’s preventable in a lot of ways.”

Source: http://citypaper.net/article.php?Another-student-dies-after-falling-sick-at-Philly-school-with-no-nurse-on-duty-20397

Phillylabor.com Commentary – This situation is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE! Having a school nurse on premise during our children’s times of need should not be a budgetary issue. It IS a life safety issue. This is the second child we have lost in a school without a school nurse available to assist the child during a medical emergency. We need a solution to this situation immediately!

There is no excuse for our generation to be the first in modern times to NOT make viable public educational resources (including life safety resources) available to them in their time of need. WE ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN AND WE NEED TO GET OUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT BEFORE THIS HAPPENS AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!