“The nursing ratios and the counseling ratios are nowhere near what they should be.”īarrera said that expected increases in ongoing state funding would give the district the chance to increase staffing, but it will take time to figure out how to allocate nurses and counselors where student needs are greatest and to determine what nurses’ and counselors’ responsibilities should be.įor example, he said, the first priority for additional counselors should be shoring up students’ social and emotional health, rather than their academic credits and grades. “With both nurses and counselors, we’ve always known that we’re understaffed,” he said. The district has not hired more nurses and counselors because it historically has not received enough funding from the state, he said. He added that the district should have twice as many nurses and counselors for middle and high schools as it does now. San Diego Unified Board President Richard Barrera said every elementary school should have a full-time nurse and a full-time counselor, five days a week. Schools spend discretionary money on a variety of things, from gifted programs to extra school supplies to reducing class sizes.

It is possible for a school to have a nurse and a counselor five days a week, but the schools would have to use money from their discretionary budgets to pay for it. It recommends a ratio of one counselor for every 250 students.

San Diego Unified gives each middle school one counselor for every 481 students and each high school one counselor for every 459 students, ratios that are on par with national averages.īut according to the American School Counselor Association, that’s not enough. No elementary school has enough students to get a school nurse or a school counselor for more than two days a week. Only two elementary schools qualify for a counselor two days a week. When it comes to counselors 76 elementary schools have enough students to qualify for a counselor one day a week. The district said it sometimes provides nurses more days than a school’s allocated amount. Most of the district’s middle schools get a school nurse two days a week, and most of its high schools get one at least three days a week.Ī school would have to have at least 2,367 students to qualify for a full-time nurse five days a week, which is the case for two of the district’s more than 170 schools: San Diego High and Henry High.

That means 93 of the district’s 108 elementary schools have enough students to qualify for a school nurse only one day a week, according to a Union-Tribune analysis of school enrollment data.

Highschool of the dead nurse