June 18, 2013

In PA? Call your Senator in Harrisburg.


We need to get legislation out of the education committee and passed to Kids with Diabetes Safe at School. I sent this email to my senator's staff, Eric Pauly. They vote June 19 9:00am. 

Please do too, or call 717 787 6599

EPauly@pasen.gov

Dear Eric, 

Kids should be safe at school. Even kids with diabetes. 

I support safe at school. I have two kids with type 1 diabetes. I intimately know this issue. 

I support SB 871. 

Will Senator Greenleaf? 

As a parent of children with type 1 diabetes, I want to thank the senator for his support of safe at school legislation in previous sessions.  I hear rumors of a flip flop to the nurses union position. I hope not. 

I hope he will continue to support safe at school and vote for 871. It is a bill that allows local school officials and parents to cooperate to provide safe school environments for children with diabetes. 

I know there are many issues in the Commonwealth. I appreciate that your office has show nuanced appreciation for this approach to facilitating parents and schools to work together to keep children safe, in class without a de facto mandate from the capital to micromanage and inflatelocal school board budgets. I appreciate that he has shown leadership on this issue as a sponsor in the past.

It is time to get this bill passed. 

Senator Greenleaf's continued support is an important step in the process. Diabetes requires ongoing vigilance. Diabetes management does not wait for legislative sessions. Unfortunately not all school budgets can expand to provide full time nursing. Local officials and parents should have the flexibility to agree to train a responsible adult to provide the needed diabetes support to help kids stay safe in schools.

Safe includes medically safe. Most of the daily tasks for children with diabetes care now are provided or supervised by parents and other adults who have be trained by diabetes educators. This standard of care can work in schools where there is not full time nursing coverage. SB 871 anticipates that and is supported by the Pennsylvania Medical Society, demonstrating the processes this bill proposes are medically sound.  


There are best practices recommended for diabetes and schools created by the leading health and education professionals. They are in a document called Helping the Student with Diabetes Succeed: A Guide for School Personnel. It was written by the NDEP, a partnership of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 200 public and private organizations including school administrators, physicians and nurses. 

Not exactly bums. 871 makes the best practices of helping students possible in PA. They are not now. 

The bill is exactly the kind of considered approach needed to support kids with diabetes in schools.

Thank you for your efforts to keep children safe in school.

Let's focus on succeeding.

To help kids succeed in safe schools, I support PA 871. The nurses union is opposed, if the Senator vote with them I expect him to fund the increase in budgets across the state their position will require with the tax revenue non of us want increased. 

Bennet Dunlap

No comments :

Post a Comment