As a school nurse teacher in the Port Washington Schools for more than 26 years, I have attended to the illnesses and injuries of thousands of children. May of the scraped knees, bloody noses, and tearful eyes belong to the wonderful children whose parents came to my nurse's office, seeking help with their own maladies, when they were students in our schools.

While I take great pride in knowing that I have cared for the injuries and ailments of two generations of Port Washington families, it has given me even greater satisfaction to know that I have helped to educate these very same students and families. For, I firmly believe that a child's education is not complete if s/he is not taught to respect and care for her or his physical and emotional needs. As a health educator, I have taught my students invaluable lessons about nutrition, safety in the home, on the playing field, and in the community and the avoidance of communicable diseases and risky behaviors. I present lessons on Good Touch/Bad Touch, Fire Safety, Home Alone Safety, Body Systems, Maturation/Puberty, Dental Health, Nutrition, Substance Abuse Prevention, Communicable Disease Prevention, Acceptance of Differences in People, HIV/AIDS Education, Bicycle and Seat Belt Safety and Bully Prevention. Many of these topics are mandated to be taught, throughout New York State. All of these topics are necessary to be taught, so that our children are prepared to care for themselves and able to make healthy lifestyle choices.

Our school nurse teachers have all been trained to teach these topics. They are comfortable answering questions that would make a parent's hair turn gray! They have the ability to incorporate their health topics into current classroom lessons. They have the experience and training needed to create enlightening lessons that impact the way that our children view their bodies, their self-worth and the people around them.

Who will teach these lessons if the experienced nurse teachers are eliminated from our schools, as proposed by members of our board of education? The classroom teacher has not been prepared to broach the touchy subjects of HIV/AIDS and of menstruation. The classroom teachers' responsibilities are already overwhelming! It would be very expensive and time-consuming to attempt to train them to teach this important material. In all likelihood, as has happened in other school districts, the mandated and necessary material would be left untaught! It would be up to each parent to teach his/her own children all that they need to know to protect themselves in this rapidly changing world. As statistics show, information that the children need to help them make decisions about the use of drugs and about not entering into risky sexual behaviors is too often left unaddressed by parents. It is the job of the nurse teacher to present this information to our children, before they begin experimenting on their own, before they enter into a myriad of risky behaviors.

The five nurse teachers in our school district all wear multiple hats, that of the school nurse and of the school's health educator. Additionally, the nurse teacher acts as a counselor, in particular, filling in when our part-time guidance counselors are not available. To adequately replace each nurse teacher, the board would have to hire a nurse and a health educator, along with expanding the hours of the guidance counselors. That would certainly be an expensive proposition for our school district, when taking into consideration that each new employee must be provided with health benefits and other compensations. Your existing nurse teachers are a bargain!

I urge the parents of our Port Washington children to make it known that they want their children to continue receiving all of the services that are provided by our nurse teachers. I hope you will make your voices heard, in response to the attempt to reduce the educational services that your children need, in their formative years. I trust that you will support the continued presence of nurse teachers, who have had many years of advanced training as educators. I know that you will do what is best for your children.

Janice Liebowitz, RN, MA, SNT