Screwed in Tornillo Part 1

Tornillo ISD is the school district furthest away from a hospital in El Paso County. Tornillo ISD has gone without a school nurse the entire school year.

A Tornillo community member alleges the reason why is that the position is being held open for a particular individual to finish the nursing program at UTEP. The community member indicates that the individual in question is the spouse of the Tornillo ISD Superintendent Dr. Jeannie Mesa-Chavez.

Her spouse is Dr. Jesus Chavez. If you recall, Dr. Chavez was the principal at Bowie High School during the now-famous cheating scandal at EPISD. Here's an article from the El Paso Times that should refresh your memory about Dr. Chavez.

According to this document, the Texas Education Agency filed a petition with the courts to revoke his teaching credentials.

  2014-4-9 Original Petition (FINAL) - EPISD

The matter has not yet been resolved in fairness to Dr. Chavez.

I questioned the veracity of the claim because I assumed there are nepotism rules in place that would prevent such a hire. But I wanted to first see if Dr. Chavez was even in nursing school in the first place. I called Dr. Jesus Chavez to confirm if the allegations from the community member were true. Specifically I asked him if he was enrolled in the Nursing Program at UTEP.

"Uh, why is that important, or what?", responded Chavez. I explained that I was following up on a tip from a community member in Tornillo, to which he replied, "Uh, its just uh, I'm just not open to answering any questions. You can call my attorney if you want."

Dr. Chavez then hung up on me before giving me the name of his attorney.

Aside from the issue of who the nurse would be, lets discuss just how bad of a situation it is to not have a school nurse.

A common occurrence in schools, especially elementary schools, is an outbreak of lice. There are protocols to follow that the nurse has to implement to contain the spread.

An RN is also necessary because you need someone who can actually dispense medication.

Have a student who takes ADD medication to help focus in class? Sorry, no one to administer the medication.

Getting over an ear infection and have to take antibiotics a couple times a day? Sorry, can't do that either.

In an economically distressed community like Tornillo, the school nurse is often the extent of any medical coverage they receive.

I checked with an official with Life Ambulance who has the contract to provide ambulance service for El Paso County. They indicate that the response time is around 15 minutes to Tornillo from the time they receive a call.

The closest facility for medical care to Tornillo, Texas is located in Fabens, Texas. But that is just a UMC clinic. The closest hospital to Tornillo is Del Sol Medical Center and Sierra Providence East. Both facilities are about 30 miles away. That is a 1/2 hour drive without traffic, after the 15 minute response time. So in the case of an emergency, its likely to be about 45 minutes before the individual even arrives at a hospital.

It not only makes good sense from a policy perspective to always have an RN on staff, but its actually a requirement under the Texas Administrative Code [Title 19, Part 2, Chapter 153, Subchapter CC (a)(D)]. I won't bore you with the entirety of the language but you can look it up with the link I just provided, but essentially it says the district has to have an RN on staff who license is in good standing in the State of Texas.

The district currently has one Certified Nursing Assistant performing the functions of an RN position. The CNA covers all four schools in the district. The district currently has 1,276 students and 192 employees. The last school nurse left the district in June of 2014.

There is no contact information for any of the board members on the Tornillo ISD website so I was unable to reach them for comment at the time of this post as to why the position has remained vacant.

I submitted an open records request to find out how many applicants have applied for the position since last June and will provide an update when that information is provided by the district. This screen shot shows the opening but appears to have only been open since December 18, 2014. The annual salary range for the position is $52,664.00 - $70,983.12. There is no information available as to why the position was only opened in December 2014 if they have been without a school nurse since June 2014.

(NOTE: For the bilingually impaired, "tornillo" means screw in Spanish. Thus the title of this piece.)