Uni has experienced hardship with not having a nurse’s office.
One thing that has come to the attention of some students is that Uni does not have a nurse’s office. More than a third of U.S. schools have nurse’s offices (KFF Health News), but for some reason, Uni does not.
Uni SSO counselor Kristi Deedrick said that it isn’t really clear on why Uni doesn’t have a nurse’s office, but she did say that the counselors do have some training for the small medical issues (using an EpiPen, for example). However, the SSO doesn’t provide much past that. Deedrick also said that most people who have health concerns have a 504 Plan where the student and the teachers discuss what they will need.
The problem with this system is that some students have certain health concerns that don’t fit into the 504 Plan. A 504 Plan’s primary usage is for people who have mental disabilities. However, Uni also uses a 504 Plan for people with physical disabilities like diabetes or allergies. It creates a plan for certain students to have different accommodations than other students don’t need. However, sometimes “just having a 504 Plan) is not possible. Such as parents not contacting the school or some of the plans do not fit your needs/desires.
Finnegan Niesen-Davis, freshman, who previously attended St. Matthew’s student said, “Sometimes I’ll get kinda sick. Like, the other day I had to just sit in the SSO for one of my classes because I was like, dying in math.” She said that she found herself needing the nurse’s office and that the SSO just didn’t cut it sometimes.
Cora Lewis-Patterson, junior, who previously attended Jefferson Middle School student said, “I find that public middle school is a little bit more dangerous than Uni High, so I have not found myself needing a nurse’s office yet…. I do think, however, that it would be useful to have a nurse’s office just in case.”
While many students believe that it would be helpful to have this, there are no plans to have this set in place. There was talk of getting a nurse’s office during the pandemic, but that hasn’t been brought up in years.
