Royal City school nurse prepares to face new challenges, keep students healthy

ROYAL CITY - School nurses will face challenges this year in Royal City and Moses Lake, the only major public school districts in Grant County that have opted for some degree of in-person learning to start the school year five months into the coronavirus pandemic.

It will be a new experience for Royal School District’s sole nurse, Janna Benzel, whose institution, like those of other school nurses across the state, closed its doors in the spring when the pandemic began. While Moses Lake district officials declined to allow their nurses to speak directly with the press, Benzel took time for an interview last week as the district prepares to open its doors.

“It’s new for us,” Benzel said in an interview. “At this point, I don’t know what to expect. I know we’re preparing for it, but it will be interesting to see what happens when we have kids in classrooms.”

One experience will be particularly different this year: flu season. While school nurses often see a sharp uptick in students coming into their offices in the fall, most of those students would get sent back to their classrooms during a normal school year, Benzel said, typically because they didn’t have a fever.

But, in accordance with guidance from local health officials, students this year who show any symptoms of the coronavirus, many of which are typical symptoms of the flu, will instead be sent home, Benzel said. Those symptoms are also often seen in students who aren’t sick, Benzel said, whether they have allergies or a propensity for headaches — but since those are also symptoms of the coronavirus, those students will still be sent home, which Benzel worries could contribute to absenteeism.

Those students will have to remain home for 10 days from the onset of symptoms plus an additional 24 hours in which they don’t present any symptoms before they can return to school, Benzel said. If they choose to get a COVID-19 test, she added, they could potentially return to school earlier if their results are negative, while the timeline wouldn’t change for a positive test result.

There may also be challenges getting students to comply with wearing a face mask at all times, particularly younger or special needs students, Benzel said. Staff in those circumstances will have to be trained in how to wear additional personal protective equipment, including face shields or even possibly hospital gowns, she added.

This could potentially be unsettling for students, said Benzel, who has an elementary-age child in the Othello School District. For reasons including this, Benzel said that her child would have taken classes online anyway if that had been a choice, though that district opted early on to pursue all-online education.

In Royal schools, there will also be the issue of ensuring that all students and staff have masks to begin with, Benzel added. Though people are encouraged to bring their own masks, a school is required by the state Department of Labor and Industries to provide them to anyone who doesn’t have one, she explained. While the district received a shipment of masks ordered earlier in the summer, Benzel said that she wasn’t sure if the shipment would be sufficient. District administrators were not immediately available for comment.

Many of those challenges will not be unique to the Royal School District, but others will be. In addition to more routine duties, a licensed nurse is needed in order to administer certain emergency medications, such as seizure medications or medications for students with feeding tubes. In case she gets sick and can’t return to work, Benzel said, she has asked district officials to hire an additional licensed nurse.