When my daughter was four, I started thinking about ... I almost said "re-entering the work force." That sounds so stilted. I started thinking about going back to work. Although my career had been in journalism and public relations, my husband knew I had been thinking about re-training as a teacher. 

"So what is it going to be?" he asked. I just snorted. He didn't realize how much the journalism profession had changed. Making a living as a freelancer had never been the easiest of paths. Now hardly anyone is paying for what they can get for free online. Besides, the more I was around children as a mom and a Girl Scout leader and a PTA volunteer, the more drawn I was to the teaching profession.

What I didn't know was that when I was ready to finish up my alternative certification and start teaching, the restructuring of property values would mean the loss of teaching jobs. 

Teachers are so absolutely fundamental that school boards -- mostly volunteers who do not necessarily have education or business experience -- have been struggling with ways to keep as many  on staff as possible. In our district, finances have been so straightened that our Superintendent actually recommended laying off most of our school nurses and health room personnel. 

So what happens when my daughter gets sick at school?

After that particular school board meeting, I came home and discussed the dilemma with my husband.

"I know teaching is the most basic function of the schools," I told him, "but if kids are so ill that they are not ready to learn, how effective can teachers be? Okay, so if they hardly have the funds to pay teachers, I suppose they have to lay off the nurses, but ... "

It was the classic "Which comes first? The chicken or the egg conundrum."

I can tell you the exact moment I realized how important nurses are in schools. It was one day the first year I was substituting, when I had a student pressing a stapler up and down his arm. He was bleeding, and to say he was distracting the class was an understatement. No one was learning. Not him, not anyone looking at that bloody row of staples. He assured me he did this all the time at home, which was meant to reassure me. I sent him out of the room with a pass to the nurse's office, telling him he needed to have the wounds cleaned and disinfected, knowing full well the major injury the nurse would have to deal with was not physical. He could not learn until he was both mentally and physically well, and the rest of the class could not learn while he was present.

After school was out, I stopped off at the nurse's office to see if the young man had made it there with his pass. I was not surprised to learn he had not. But she followed up with him and his family.

Given that experience, and more, it is not so easy for me to say, "Oh, yes, the Superintendent needs to lay off nurses to keep teachers on staff."

God only knows we need them all, nurses and teachers. Our children need them all.

By the way, did you know that the federal government's recent health care legislation included language about school-based health care centers? This could be a resource for districts to provide some basic health care services for our kids and keep the teachers in the classroom. Unfortunately, it is not yet fully funded.

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"School Clinics Await Funds From Health Care Reform": http://tinyurl.com/3yo2ll2 

H.R. 3590 Sec. 4101 School-Based Health Centers: http://tinyurl.com/33ccrhx