"Only 12 states, mostly in the Northeast, met the 1-to-750 ratio recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the association found.
In Michigan, severe financial problems prompted the Pontiac School District to lay off five of its six nurses, who played a key role in the district's response to swine flu last spring.
''If H1N1 is anything like the prediction, schools without school nurses will be missing their front line of defense,'' said Susan Zacharski, the district's only remaining nurse. She now works in a center for special needs students who are legally entitled to a nurse, but there are no nurses to serve the district's other 7,200 students.
With swine flu cases rising with the new school year, districts are depending on teachers, principals and secretaries with little medical training to identify, isolate and send home sick children, as well as monitor absences and illnesses for signs of a wider outbreak.
''We're asking so much more of untrained staff as far as providing medical management,'' said Nina Fekaris, a nurse in the Oregon's Beaverton School District who is responsible for four schools with 4,300 students. ''It's putting our kids at risk.''
Some teachers complain they haven't received guidance or training on how to deal with swine flu.
''We really don't know what symptoms to look for, how to caution our kids or how to protect ourselves,'' said Robert Ellis, a first grade teacher at Washington Elementary School in Richmond, Calif. ''I'm really concerned about it spreading in the classroom, how many kids will be impacted and the loss of educational time.''
Since it was first identified in April, the swine flu has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed nearly 600, the CDC estimates.
So far swine flu does not appear to be more dangerous than seasonal flu, which kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year, but it appears to be more contagious and health officials are concerned that it could mutate and become deadlier.
Federal health officials are urging parents to have their kids vaccinated, but the H1N1 vaccine will not be ready until October.
In districts that have them, school nurses are developing plans to screen and quarantine sick students, teaching students proper classroom hygiene, urging parents to keep ill children at home, organizing vaccination campaigns and instructing teachers and school staff how to identify sick students."
Well, there you have it. A crisis du jour the AP seems all too willing not to let go to waste. Parents can't be counted upon as proper watchdogs and providers for their children's healthcare. Children's doctors and clinics aren't even alluded to in this story. Only the gub'mint school nurse can save the pandemic day.
H1N1 isn't any more dangerous than seasonal flu, but it appears to be more contagious, yet the concern is a college educated, classroom teacher cannot identify a child with flu like symptoms?
The top heavy, high dollar administrators probably wouldn't take a pay cut to retain some nurses.
Obviously, a new multi-billion dollar federal program must be implemented.
