Pleasant Valley hiring for nurse’s office

Pleasant Valley Elementary School is hiring another part-time health room technician to address growing health needs at the school.

At a recent board meeting, a PVE health room technician brought data before the board showing that student health needs had increased from last year but the nursing staff had not grown to match.

Karen Deppen told board members that in the first 12 days of school this year, the nurse’s office received an average of 86 student visits per day, as opposed to an average of 60 visits per day in the first 10 days of school last year.

In the same time frames, this year there have already been four 911 emergency calls as opposed to zero last year, she added.

“Not only have the numbers significantly increased, the acuity of the student needs have greatly increased,” Deppen concluded.

This is the first year of the full-day kindergarten program at PVE, which could be contributing to these statistics.

Deppen read an excerpt from the Pleasant Valley School District’s 2018-19 annual report that said costs of the kindergarten program included “additional services, such as expanded nursing.”

But the current nurse’s office staff is the same as last year, including the school nurse, Deppen, and a part-time health room technician, Deppen said.

Superintendent David Piperato said he was out of the district the week of the meeting and only heard of this concern recently.

The Human Resources Department immediately started working on a solution.

“The board recognizes the need for additional support in our nurse’s office at PVE and has provided us authority to hire a part-time health room technician,” Piperato said Friday.

“We believe the addition of the part-time staff member should be sufficient in addressing our needs, but we will continue to monitor the situation and request additional staffing from the board should the need arise.”

The position was to be posted Friday.