For the second year in a row, the jobs of Morgan Hill School
District nurses are on the line, as School Board trustees are faced
with cutting nearly $3 million from next year
’s budget. In a special meeting Friday afternoon, called with 24
hours notice, trustees voted 5-1, Trustee Amina Khemici voting
against, to issue layoff notices to one of two district nurses.
For the second year in a row, the jobs of Morgan Hill School District nurses are on the line, as School Board trustees are faced with cutting nearly $3 million from next year’s budget.
In a special meeting Friday afternoon, called with 24 hours notice, trustees voted 5-1, Trustee Amina Khemici voting against, to issue layoff notices to one of two district nurses.
Trustee Tom Kinoshita, whose resignation was announced at Monday’s school board retreat by President George Panos, was not present at the Friday session.
According to state law, if a certificated employee – and school nurses are certificated – is going to be laid off at the end of the school year, the employee must receive a layoff notice by March 15.
The decision, said Trustee Shellé Thomas, was not one the board liked to make.
“It hurts,” she said Monday. “These are mandated services … The problem is, we have close to a $3 million budget deficit and we have to build alternatives.”
The mandated services Thomas refers to are the state requirements that school nurses perform vision, hearing, scoliosis and color-blind screenings for students in the district every year. Not all students are screened every year; only certain grade levels receive screenings.
“This has nothing to do with the job a person does, nothing do with the responsibilities of the job and caliber of people of people in them,” Thomas said. “It is a sad way to operate, but that’s where we are.”
District Nurse Gayle Marshall provided last year’s numbers for trustees on Friday: 5,300 hearing screenings, 5,300 vision screenings, 650 scoliosis screenings and 192 special physical health care plans.
The health care plans can only be created by the district nurses. The screenings can be performed by the nurse or by a certificated staff member who has taken the required course. The school nurse can train staff members and can enlist parents to help with the screenings. The nurse may also train staff to deal with special medical situations, but, as Marshall pointed out, training staff to relieve the nurse of these duties also takes time.
Marshall also told trustees that the district has 23 students with diabetes, 37 students with epilepsy, 59 students with some type of heart condition and 488 students with asthma.
“At what cost will the School Board compromise the students’ health and safety,” Marshall asked.
Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers President Donna Foster spoke on behalf of the nurses.
“You cannot go outside our contract to hire someone to perform these services,” she said. “These employees are entitled to perform this work.”
Layoff notices can be rescinded, as they were last year when the district issued 111 notices to its teachers and one district nurse. The district currently has one full time and two part time nurses.
The nurses were not informed by the district of the potential layoffs before the meeting. They attended the meeting, they said, because they heard it “through the grapevine.”
Other community members heard of the meeting, and three chose to attend, including Victoria Battison, spokeswoman for CARE (Community Alliance for Responsible Education).
Battison said she was speaking on her own behalf, not representing CARE. She questioned why the meeting came up “suddenly,” and wondered if the trustees were “deliberately trying to conceal it from the community.”
Trustee Jan Masuda told Battison after the meeting that because it is a personnel issue, Assistant Superintendent Denise Tate needed to be present, and she did not attend the March 8 meeting because of an emergency.
The district at the March 8 issued layoff notices to all school principals.
Another controversial cut proposed is the elimination of extra-curricular activities and athletics in grades 7-12.
And with cuts throughout the district seemingly inevitable, some are questioning plans to open in August the long-awaited second high school, Sobrato.
On the list of considered cuts for MHSD is closing Burnett Elementary School. Another is to delay the re-opening of Machado Elementary.
The board will meet again on March 22 when budget issues will be on the agenda.
