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District health coordinator reports high nurse caseloads, AED replacements and plans for HEARTS Act compliance
Summary
Kim Sott, the district health coordinator, told the Camdenton R-III board on May 12 that nurses handled thousands of visits this year, the district updated all AEDs across campuses and staff will develop a crisis-response manual to meet the HEARTS Act cardiac-plan requirement for 2025–26.
Kim Sott, the district health coordinator, told the Camdenton R-III School Board on May 12 that the district’s nursing staff handled thousands of student visits this school year, and the health team will prioritize a new crisis-response manual that incorporates a cardiac emergency plan required under the HEARTS Act.
Sott said nurses record between roughly 3,000 and 8,000 visits in a school year and that the district’s online registration produced “a little over 4,000” reported medical conditions this year. She reported the district turned in its state immunization report and was in compliance (percentage not specified in the meeting record).
Sott said the district replaced the final six automated external defibrillators (AEDs) this year; all 21 AEDs have been updated in the past two years. She described distribution: multiple AEDs in larger buildings (the high school has three and one in the theater) and one at the Admin and Transportation buildings. Oak Ridge currently has a single AED and Sott said the building “probably could use another one.”
Sott described efforts to improve emergency information flow to first responders by providing summary pages with students’ names, birthdays and medical conditions and by making staff emergency-contact information more accessible to nurses via district systems. She said a key project for the next year is compiling a district-wide crisis-response manual, led in part by work on the HEARTS Act requirement that every public school have a cardiac emergency plan in place by the 2025–26 school year.
On staffing, Sott said one nurse is transferring from Dogwood to Oak Ridge because the Oak Ridge nurse is retiring; the district will have one open nursing position at Dogwood next year. She told the board the district’s health aide program provided additional support at the middle school in response to higher visit volumes there.
Board members praised the nursing staff’s work and asked follow-up questions about visit spikes at the middle school; Sott said that school had several students with elevated daily healthcare needs, including five students with diabetes who can require multiple daily visits.
No formal action was taken on the report; staff will continue work on the crisis-response manual and operational updates.
