Latest Health Care Crisis: Shortage of School Nurses

Hat tip to Blogcritics here:

It seems that there is a shortage of school nurses these days--why should we care? This article on Blogcritics points out that kids have died because there was no school nurse on staff.

I'm thinking back to my Catholic School days (7th and 8th grade only for me) and I don't think we ever had a school nurse. Rather a doofy Sr. Anne Marie would take care of us if we fell or cut ourselves or had a fever. I remember falling and sliding on the gravel as a kid and ripping open my knee and face rather harshly, but I can't remember if anyone other than Mrs. O'Connor, our school principal or Sr. Anne Marie looked at me. My dad came and took me to the emergency room for x rays and maybe stitches--but like the famous Babe Ruth line "X rays of my head showed nothing." And I didn't require stitches either. I did end up with a sprained arm and had to have a sling and a huge ace bandage on my knee. All this was two days before my confirmation and that's what all the dopey teachers I had were concerned about--not whether I was hurt or not.

But the issue at hand is really how safe are our Catholic Schools as opposed to our public ones? All the public schools I attended had full time nurses and my college has a fully equipped health center (Fordham- Go Rams!). So is catholic School education really "safer" than public schools?

How about you folks out there that have kids in school now? Do they have a school nurse on the premises? Did you if you went to Catholic School? Public?