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CUSD health director outlines nursing teams, screenings and Lions Club glasses partnership
Summary
Health Services Director Christine Bromley told the board that district nurses and assistants screen roughly 22,000 students each year, run state-mandated vision and hearing checks, and have begun a Lions Club partnership that provided 35 students with new glasses after a free clinic.
Christine Bromley, the district’s health service director, told the Chandler Unified School District governing board on Dec. 10 that nurses and health assistants handle a range of duties across 49 schools, from daily triage to mandated vision and hearing screenings.
“In our health service team, the backbone of the department is registered nurses,” Bromley said, describing three registered-nurse roles — health service coordinators for elementary schools, school nurses in secondary settings and two district rover nurses — plus health assistants who work under nurse delegation. She said state law requires vision and hearing screens and cited the statutes given to the board during her presentation (transcript reference: “ARS 36 8 9 9.1” and “ARS 36 8 9 9”).
Bromley provided staffing and workload figures: elementary health service coordinators (eight RNs) are each assigned to about four to five elementary schools and manage roughly 2,250 student lives on average; secondary nurses typically manage about 2,000 students per site and receive support from health assistants when counts are higher. She said the district screens “on average about 22,000 students a school year,” across pre-K–12, and described tools used for nonverbal students and infants for hearing screening.
The presentation included several operational details: the district currently counts 17 licensed certified nursing assistants, 21 medical assistants, two EMTs and one LPN among its health-assistant staff; the district maintains 83 AED units across campuses and tracks those devices for compliance; and state vision reporting and immunization reports are completed on statutory timelines.
Bromley described an active outreach partnership with the Lions Club, created through a memorandum of understanding the board previously approved. She said the district’s first Lions Club clinic (Oct. 13) screened 42 students from about 14 schools and the district distributed 35 pairs of new glasses from that event. “With this partnership, tomorrow, we have 53 kids scheduled,” she told the board.
Board members asked why health-office visits had increased and whether staff were overwhelmed. Bromley responded that year-to-date visits are affected by seasonality (allergies, respiratory cases), student mental-health needs and reporting categories that include clinical referrals (for example, strep throat and asthma treatments are included in the same “accident/incident” reporting line). She said the district spreads site-level demand across the system and uses rover nurses and temporary staffing adjustments for high-volume days, and that she had not received reports of sustained strain at any single site.
On funding, staff told the board that nurses and health office staffing are primarily paid from the district’s maintenance and operations fund and that limited Medicaid reimbursement is available only for qualifying services when paperwork is submitted; there is not a dedicated state health-services line item.
The presentation closed with Bromley describing intake and referral processes — nurses coordinate with site counselors and the district’s multidisciplinary teams when students need additional supports — and an offer to return with follow-up information if board members requested further budget or staffing detail.
Ending: The presentation ended with Bromley saying she was “open for questions,” and the board moved to the next agenda item after a brief set of follow-ups about screening rates and the Lions Club schedule.
