Members of the public voiced their opposition to a recent proposal by the Lynnfield School Committee to eliminate the nurse coordinator position at the central office, currently held by Toni-ann Rebelo, and the high school library media center specialist position, currently held by Janice Alpert, at a recent committee meeting.
At a school district budget presentation, interim Superintendent Tom Geary said it is necessary to eliminate the two positions, among others, in order to make room for other needs.
“Make no mistake, all of these will cause pain, and none of them were done lightly,” Geary said. “But in order to add things (to the budget), it has to come from somewhere.”
Lynnfield Middle School Nurse Chris Sheils said that she understands the committee and superintendent have to be fiscally responsible, but she doubted that all of the data concerning nursing services across the district was available at the time the committee decided to eliminate the nurse coordinator position.
“Nurses are currently staffed at a level of one nurse per building,” Sheils said. “At present, our enrollment at the high school is 572 students. Lynnfield Middle School has 713, and Summer Street Elementary has 416, along with 37 preschoolers, and that’s under the care of one nurse. Huckleberry Hill has 448.”
Sheils described what a day looks like in her clinic.
“Many times we arrive early to find someone sitting and waiting for us to be seen,” Sheils said. “There are also the visits that are the results of, ‘My mother told me to go to the nurse and have you check me out.’”
Coleen Reska, a nurse who lives in Lynnfield, described what the nurse coordinator or lead nurse is responsible for in a letter read by Diane Courtney, a pediatric emergency and trauma nurse and parent of Lynnfield High School students.
“The role of a nurse coordinator or lead nurse is to manage the total school nursing program,” Reska’s letter reads. “Some essential functions include, but are not limited to, recruiting, providing feedback to nurses, and identifying the health needs of the student population using available data.”
Reska said it would be a great disservice to the students, staff, and community members to cut the position.
A parent of a Huckleberry Hill Elementary School student, who heavily relies on the school nurse due to her child’s complex medical condition, also said that having a nurse coordinator is crucial.
“The nurse coordinator is a crucial part of the nursing staff, and by cutting her position, you’ll be jeopardizing my son’s health and safety, along with the other students in our community,” the parent said.
In a previous meeting, a handful of current and former Lynnfield High School students, who were a part of the school’s help desk program under Alpert’s mentorship, took the opportunity to talk about how Alpert, the high school’s library media center specialist, made an impact on their lives.
“As a freshman, I struggled,” said Sebastian Fadel, who graduated from Lynnfield High in 2018. “I did not find my place until the help desk. She gave me motivation to learn and to pursue higher education.”
“I was passionate about one specific area of study that I did well in, and that was STEM, specifically information technology and computers, which is now how I make my living,” said Gabe Landau, who graduated in 2015. “Ms. Alpert’s student help desk was one of the only areas in which I was given the opportunity to explore this field.”
A petition to save the LHS library media center specialist role, posted on fightforthefirst.org, has garnered more than 600 signatures.
