To the editor:

On May 21, the Lawrence Journal-World reported that the Lawrence School Board had voted 4-2 (with Leni Salkind and Jack Davidson in opposition) to replace a number of registered nurses in the school system with “low-paid health office attendants.” A more recent article (Sunday) reports that this decision was counter to one proposed by the school nurses, one that would “have full-time nurses at the four junior high schools.”

If one assumes that the alternative proposal addressed the issue of cutting the nursing budget, one wonders then what sort of reasons the four school board members who voted against the nurses’ proposal (Austin Turney, Scott Morgan, Mary Loveland and and Board President Sue Morgan) had for their decisions.

One wonders what reasons they had that outweighed the advice and concerns expressed by local medical doctors in a letter read to the school board by Dr. Riordan and signed by of some 45 other local physicians; a letter by a Martha Skeet, past nursing coordinator, that detailed the horrific situation that caused USD 497 to employ only registered nurses in the first place; and finally the concerns of the current school nurses all professionals who know first hand about health care and the medical needs of current school children.

It appears that if there was ever an issue where all expert advice was counter to the four board members’ decision, this is it. So, if money was not the issue, what were the reasons that weighed so heavily against such advice from the medical professionals?

Donald Hatcher
Lawrence