No-nurse September made for a rocky start to school

For over 10 years, ARHS has participated in the Emily Dickinson Museum’s annual September poetry festival called Tell It Slant. This year, however, the school did not attend globally known, award-winning poet Victoria Chang’s headlining poetry workshop on September 25, but not by choice. Until the first week of October, there was no permanent nurse at ARHS who could check the list of potential student attendees and assess (and provide) their medical needs for an off-campus trip.

School nurses, against popular belief, don’t only triage illness and injury; they conduct a lot of behind-the-scenes work in schools. Some of these obligations are checking which students have their immunizations, conducting eyesight and hearing screenings, attending field trips when necessary, and checking off forms for trips and athletics. They also distribute necessary medication for those who need it and are ready to help in the case of a severe medical emergency.

Recently, both the ARHS nurse and nurse manager resigned; the former left at the end of the 2025-2026 school year to take a hospital job, and the latter left two weeks before this school year to take a position teaching college nursing. But there were several substitute nurses on a rotation who came into ARHS until a nurse was hired. This allowed for someone to always be on-site to conduct basic nursing duties: treating illness or injury and distributing medication. However, without a permanent nurse in the school, it made it impossible for field trips to be approved.

Amethyst Brook Elementary School nurse Celia Van Driesche spent a couple of days substituting at ARHS this fall. One day, she was called in last-minute to substitute well after the school day began. She wasn’t at her phone or her desk when they first tried to reach her, so she didn’t learn of the vacancy until 10 a.m., when they said, “You need to come up right now.”

The job proved intense since whoever was covering had to work solo in a building where they didn’t personally know the students or their medical needs. “I can provide care [and] figure out how to manage a situation, but it is very daunting when you don’t have information to go on. All of the buildings have [students with] significant health issues,” said Van Driesche.

She also mentioned that she did not have all of the information while substituting. “My first day showing up at the high school, I didn’t know the key code to get into the locked cabinets. Most sub nurses for the district have an orientation where they go to all the different buildings,” she said.

Registered nurse and substitute Catherine Lodge also mentioned inaccessibility to the nurse portal. “I had access to all the information the permanent nurse has because I have asked for access,” she said. “I sub so much it would be hard for me not to have access to all the information I do. Some sub nurses do not have access.”

Lodge said that an ARHS school nurse had been hired and was onboarded in early October. Even with that position filled, Lodge believes that the district needs to fill another critical role. “What [they] really need is a nurse manager,” she said. “I think they should prioritize hiring a nurse manager.”

Superintendent Xiomara Herman spoke on this issue at ARHS before the new nurse had begun, in late September. She confirmed that there was a permanent high school nurse who started on October 1, Tannin Fox. She acknowledged that over a month was a while to go without such a critical position. However, she said that there was no quicker way to do it. “It’s an urgent hire for us. The person we are hiring, they often have to transition from their former employment,” she said.

She also mentioned that there are many forms and background checks the district must conduct before onboarding a new hire. Usually this takes 45-60 days, but HR Director Jennifer Ortiz said that with her team it takes only 14-30 days. The rest of the timing was out of their control, they said.

Additionally, Ortiz mentioned that there was someone hired for the position of nurse manager, but that it didn’t work out. “There had been a nurse [manager] that was forwarded as a finalist in the summer, but there were unforeseen complications with the onboarding process, and we were unable to move forward with that person,” Ortiz said.

The job of nurse manager is still currently posted, they said.

Herman mentioned that she would address the accessibility for substitute nurses as well, as she said that she didn’t know that they were having issues. However, she did say that the district had to be cautious of who had access to what personal information about students. “One of the things that we’re very aware [of] is, as a substitute, what should you have access to? And that’s for anyone in our system,” she said. “What should you have access to to do your job? And then the amount of time you may need access to that.”

Herman also mentioned that she didn’t know that the nurse situation was affecting school-sponsored field trips until after her interview with The Graphic on September 23. “The first thing I saw in my email is athletics have nursing clearance, so I was under the assumption that the field trips were moving, [and] the sub nurses who are there are actually providing that support,” she said. She said that she hoped to address this soon.

Matthew Despres, an ARHS English teacher and organizer for the Tell It Slant field trip, expressed frustration since he had gotten everything organized in August. As soon as school started, he said, “I brought [the rosters] up, and, in the office, they [said] we can’t even take those rosters, because we have no one to look at them and approve it. And so that was the first ‘no’ that I got.”

ARHS English Department Head Sara Barber-Just said she reached out to Herman via email on September 1 to flag that she was worried the field trip had been stalled but did not receive a response. Despres also attempted to communicate his desire to get the field trip to move forward to Principal Marc Gomes and Assistant Principal Sam Camera on September 1 and, after receiving no response, on September 10. They confirmed on September 14 that the field trip could not move ahead without a nurse, said Despres.

Over 100 English students at ARHS were supposed to attend the festival as they did last year in the fall. Despres shared his previous excitement for the event. “[The Emily Dickinson House] brings in some amazing poets, both in person and virtually, to celebrate the art form of poetry,” he said, and he had been looking forward to Chang’s workshop. Last year, Terrance Hayes ran a large workshop at the event and five English teachers brought their classes.

However, the event this fall is not the only field trip planned for the ARHS English Department this year.

“I am [still] looking forward to bringing students to the Dickinson Museum in late fall [or] early winter, after we have a nurse hired, in smaller groups,” Despres said. “And I’m looking forward to taking students off campus to our annual spring poetry event at Smith College, [as long as there is] an appropriate nurse to accompany.”