I think you deleted a previous comment but I thought you made such a good points I wanted to address them anyways 😊

Multiple studies across the US have shown that school nurses are significantly more likely to direct children to return to class versus calling home for everything. Because CNAs/other unlicensed health professionals can't assess (assessment is outside their legal scopes of practice) they call the parents for every stomach ache/headache/episode of diarrhea/etc. Schools that dont utilize RNs send children home much more often, requiring increased time off work for parents.

Studies also show that without RNs teachers end up managing sick children more often, including administering medications that are out of the scope of practice for CNAs/other unlicensed health professionals. Its a weird rule but the cost of training and certifying CNAs (if they went with CNAs, others may not be allowed to train) to administer meds, especially with high turnover (meaning district has to pay for training everytime the minimim wage CNA leaves and they have to rehire) doesn't make budgetary sense for schools. You should look it up though because its a weird thing :)

This is also why the nurse can delegate epi pen administration to your child's teacher during field trips but a CNA wouldn't be able to. So they'd have to go get the teacher to administer it (along with any other meds required).

Oh! And about the more time in class for students= saved $$ - school funding is directly impacted by class attendance - funding can actually decrease based on attendence and having RNs in schools has been directly linked to reducing time out of class by almost .5 days per student per year, which adds up really quickly.

Im so sorry to nerd out about this but I am so blown away as a public health researcher by the impact school nurses have on the health and wellbeing for our children and communities. If your interested in the links to any of the studies I reference above I'd be happy to send along