Florida's Public School Nurses Are On The Front Line And Can Get COVID Vaccines — But Not All Are Taking The Shots

Press release from the Florida Phoenix:

By Danielle J. Brown

January 26, 2021

While frontline healthcare workers in hospitals and other facilities have gotten priority for COVID vaccines, not everyone knows that Florida’s school nurses are eligible for the shots as well.

School nurses not only have regular duties but also handle COVID-19 issues, from reporting and isolating potentially infected students to identifying and notifying people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus, called contact tracing.

More than 1,500 school nurses are employed in Florida’s public schools, as of 2019-20, according to the Department of Education. That state has 67 school districts.

The school nurses can get vaccinated, according to an email by the Florida Department of Health, because, “as health care workers with direct patient contact, [school nurses] are eligible to receive the [COVID] vaccine in Florida.”

As such, local health departments are helping with vaccine distributions to school nurses.

However, not all school nurses are taking advantage of the shots.

“You know, everyone has a choice, and there are some who did not get the vaccine,” said Michele Shelar, a registered nurse and supervisor of health services for Alachua County Public Schools.

For Alachua County, school nurses and other school-related health professionals are able to make appointments with the county health department to get the vaccines.

In Leon County in the state capital, the school district set up a vaccination day for employees who qualified, according to Terri Anderson, coordinator for health and services for Leon County Schools.

Those qualified were Leon County school district employees 65 and older, school health workers such as nurses or health aides, and a few “COVID monitors” who watched over students who may have been in contact with COVID. Those groups are scheduled to get a second shot in the next few weeks.

“Everyone that wanted it was eligible to get it then,” Anderson said. “We had about 160-165 individuals who took advantage of that.”

Meanwhile, teachers and other staff still don’t have the go-ahead to get the shots in Florida. That’s because, for now, Gov. Ron DeSantis is focusing on vaccinating the elderly, meaning residents age 65 and older. (Some teachers will be in that age range and could be vaccinated.)

While the school nurses face exposure to COVID-19, several school district representatives told the Phoenix that districts did not have cases of nurses contracting COVID from their schools.

Michele Shelar, from Alachua County Public Schools, noted that some nurses or health aides had been exposed from COVID from outside the schools and had to quarantine as a result — but none contracted the virus from within the schools, to her knowledge.

Administrators say access to the vaccine offers stress relief for school nurses who want the shots, in part because COVID-19 has increased their daily workload and the nurses face potential exposure to the virus.

In a typical year, school nurses’ responsibilities include ensuring students properly take prescription medicines, counseling students with health difficulties such as asthma and diabetes, and confirming that students have their immunizations up to date.

“[School nurses] have a lot of responsibilities — it’s not just Band-Aids and ice packs and boo-boos,” Shelar said.

Mike Riley, a spokesperson for the Charlotte County School District in southwest Florida, said that “naturally, our school nurses have increased workloads due to COVID-19 reporting and monitoring and contact tracing.”

Terri Anderson with Leon County Schools shared those sentiments.

“Of course it makes everybody’s job tougher,” said Anderson, “because not only are these nurses trying to take care of the children in the schools that have health issues — diabetes is a primary one — they are also being bombarded with questions and helping to do contact tracing and everything else that goes with COVID.”

This story was originally published by the Florida Phoenix. For more stories from the Florida Phoenix, visit FloridaPhoenix.com.