Students are a lot more vulnerable to the swine flu virus because it easily spreads in classrooms.  Because it takes a heavier toll on children and young adults, schools are desperate in many districts for school nurses.  Many districts have few or no nurses to handle or respond to a swine flu outbreak.

The shortage of school nurses could lead to more students falling ill from the H1N1 virus, which can be particularly dangerous for children with weakened immune systems or respiratory conditions such as asthma, experts say.

“It’s really irresponsible of the school district to not really provide medical oversight while kids are in school,” said Jamie Hintzke, who has two kids in Northern California’s Pleasanton Unified School District, including a son with severe food allergies. The district has one nurse for 15 schools and almost 15,000 students. “I’m playing Russian roulette every single day he goes to school.”

When the swine flu emerged last spring, it was a school nurse in New York City – Mary Pappas at St. Francis Preparatory School – who helped identify and curtail the country’s first major outbreak after she noticed large numbers of students complaining of high fevers and sore throats.  But many schools around the country don’t have a medical professional who can quickly diagnose students and detect outbreaks.

A 2008 survey by the National Association of School Nurses found that only 45% of public schools have their own full-time nurse, another 30% have a part-time nurse, and a quarter don’t have any nurses at all.

The average nurse-to-student ratio nationwide was one nurse for every 1,151 students, but in 14 states there was only one nurse for more than 2,000 students, according to the nurses association. States with the highest ratios include Oregon with one nurse for every 3,142 students, Michigan with one for every 4,204, and Utah with one for every 4,893.

Only 12 states, mostly in the Northeast, met the 1-to-750 ratio recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the association found.  In Michigan, severe financial problems prompted the Pontiac School District to lay off five of its six nurses, who played a key role in the district’s response to swine flu last spring.

“If H1N1 is anything like the prediction, schools without school nurses will be missing their front line of defense,” said Susan Zacharski, the district’s only remaining nurse. She now works in a center for special needs students who are legally entitled to a nurse, but there are no nurses to serve the district’s other 7,200 students.

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With swine flu cases rising with the new school year, districts are depending on teachers, principals and secretaries with little medical training to identify, isolate and send home sick children, as well as monitor absences and illnesses for signs of a wider outbreak.

“We’re asking so much more of untrained staff as far as providing medical management,” said Nina Fekaris, a nurse in the Oregon’s Beaverton School District who is responsible for four schools with 4,300 students. “It’s putting our kids at risk.”  Some teachers complain they haven’t received guidance or training on how to deal with swine flu.

“We really don’t know what symptoms to look for, how to caution our kids or how to protect ourselves,” said Robert Ellis, a first grade teacher at Washington Elementary School in Richmond, Calif. “I’m really concerned about it spreading in the classroom, how many kids will be impacted and the loss of educational time.”

Since it was first identified in April, the swine flu has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed nearly 600, the CDC estimates.  So far swine flu does not appear to be more dangerous than seasonal flu, which kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year, but it appears to be more contagious and health officials are concerned that it could mutate and become deadlier.

Federal health officials are urging parents to have their kids vaccinated, but the H1N1 vaccine will not be ready until October.  In districts that have them, school nurses are developing plans to screen and quarantine sick students, teaching students proper classroom hygiene, urging parents to keep ill children at home, organizing vaccination campaigns and instructing teachers and school staff how to identify sick students.  In Utah’s Granite School District near Salt Lake City, officials have prepared a pandemic response plan, but the district only has 10 nurses for 89 schools with 68,000 students.

“It would be great to have a school nurse in each school. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury,” said district spokesman Ben Horsley.

In California, where there was one nurse for every 2,240 students last year, roughly half of the state’s 1,000 school districts do not have any nurses at all.  Among them is the Berkeley Unified School District, which has 17 schools with 9,000 students. The district has a partnership with the city health department to deal with school health issues, but has not had its own nurses for many years, said spokesman Mark Coplan.

“Parents have called to say, ‘Is there a new policy to deal with H1N1? We say, ‘No, it’s exactly the same as seasonal flu,’” Coplan said. “We really want to treat this as a normal situation.”

“What I’m concerned about is anyone thinking this won’t happen here,” Green said. “If there’s no plan in place and people are just acting in an ad hoc way, that’s risky.”

The problem is, there are only 19 states where a specific nurse–student ratio and very few states set money aside to pay for those nurses according to the nurses association.  The director for school health programs for the National School Boards Association, Brenda Green, has been urging school districts to partner with local health agencies, hospitals and nursing schools to prepare for the swine flu in their school districts.

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My Take: When I was in grade school there was always a school nurse at the school.  What is changed in the last 35 years?  Oh, I know, they would rather put the money into highways and government official pay raises.  I can remember in junior high and high school there was a nurse only so many days a week.  At that time, I never thought anything of it.

However, schools need to have a nurse on duty every day school is in!  A teacher cannot be expected to know everything about their students for health purposes.  Teachers have a hard enough job as it is with overcrowding in their classrooms.  As it is, I do not think teachers get paid enough to do the job they are doing!

And I know that many teachers do not like to hear it put this way, but, they are the babysitters for our children as well as their educators.  The funny thing of it is, parents pay their babysitters better than they do their teachers.  What does that say about our society?

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Little Girl Hairdos

All the darling accessories for your little princess like a beautiful hair bow are now available!  One retailer’s products are all handmade by them with special attention to detail.  They also use top quality material so you’re items will be durable and last a long time!  Remember, each item is handcrafted and made to your specifications so that flower headband will fit your little princess perfectly.

Exercise and Relaxation

Are you looking for a good workout?  You might try a Pilates workout or Pilates video.  You will find a Pilates workout that features a Pilates equipment very invigorating.  You will also find one website that allows you to utilize Pilates exercises and view Pilates DVDs right at your fingertips right over the Internet.  This is unlike the Alexander Technique, which is a one on one experience with an Alexander Technique teacher.  The Alexander Technique exercises Manhattan is an educational system that helps people to use their bodies with greater ease and efficiency in everyday activities.  It improves postural and movement to dysfunction by engaging the mind and body to reduce physical misuse.

According to a recent study by Merchants Payments Coalition, merchants and American consumers pay more for credit card fees or interchange fees than in other industrialized economies.  These fees charged by credit card companies are a crucial cost that is becoming increasingly under the scrutiny of retailers who want to trim every cost of business from their mortgages to their utilities.

Two laws currently making their way through Congress were drafted to assist businesses renegotiate those fees.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D–Mich.) introduced HR 2695, the “Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2009.” The proposed legislation was written to create a system in which merchants can collectively negotiate with banks over interchange fees. Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) introduced “The Credit Card Fair Fee Act,” S1212, which also intends to create a structure for merchants to bargain with banks.

The Electronic Payments Coalition is a Washington, D.C. based group that represents banks and credit card companies. It said interchange fees are merely a cost of doing business and that an average American interchange rate is 1.6%.

But according to the MPC study, released Sept. 14, interchange fees in the United States cost 2% of every transaction, compared with 0.5% charged per transaction in Australia and a 0.3% fee in the European Union.  The study claims banks and credit card companies made $48 billion from American fees in 2008, which is triple what they made from these fees in 2001. The Washington, D.C. based MPC is supported by retail trade groups such as the National Retail Federation, Retail Industry Leaders Association and California Retailers Association.

California boutique owners are watching the fight over interchange fees with interest, and they renegotiate their interchange fees with varying degrees of success.

Fred Levine is co-owner of the M.Fredric chain of boutiques, based in Agoura Hills, Calif.  He said renegotiating interchange fees is a crucial part of doing business. “It’s kept our rates low,” Levine said. M.Fredric has done business with Wells Fargo for more than a decade. He fields calls daily from other financial institutions that promise lower rates. Requesting his bank compete against other offers has helped keep rates low. But the success of his company has created better terms for processing fees.

“We pay a fraction of what we paid in the 1980s,” he said. “We used to pay 4.5% for American Express cards and 2% and 3% for Visa and MasterCard will. Our rates have gone down significantly based on the volume of the business and the average size of the ticket.” He did not divulge what the interchange rates were for his store.

Alison Muh is owner of Surly Girl, a Los Angeles boutique and accessories brand. She said lowering transaction fees by 1% meant great savings for her business. However, she said it was a hassle negotiating with processing companies. “The fine print in your contract often has hidden or misleading terms and cancellation fees,” she said.

Diane Merrick is the owner of the Diane Merrick boutique in Los Angeles. She said her processing fees were fair and the various offers to negotiate bank fees never seemed to result in important savings for her one-store boutique business. “It’s major, major work to change, and it ends up with very little change in monthly fees,” she said of renegotiating fees. “This is an important thing for big, big guys. For the little guys, it’s not a big deal.”

The Halloween season is upon us and one merchant is ready for it . . . The hottest Halloween costumes are meant for serious grown-up fun. Steal the show at Halloween, parties, carnivals and other special events with detail-rich hot halloween costumes that turn any celebration into a true party.  This retailer carries competitively priced 2009 hottest Halloween costumes in every style and size.  For fun you will never outgrow of, check out their large selection before Halloween gets here!

Bringing in negotiators

There are better ways to cut fees than going through tough negotiations with finance companies, said James Van Dyke, president of Javelin Strategies, a Pleasanton, Calif. based research firm and consultancy that specializes in the financial-services industry.

He suggested retailers restrict consumer choice to payment methods with cheaper interchange fees. He said the PayPal payment systems and Arco service stations often nudge their customers to make purchases from debit cards or payment options cheaper than the higher-cost credit cards.

The nudging often means offering lower prices to those using preferred-payment systems. Other times, it takes nothing more than a simple request, he said. “A high-end retailer might post a sign in elegantly scripted gold lettering saying: ‘For convenience and safety, [this boutique] respectfully recommends that our valued customers use “XYZ” card,’” he said. Shoppers often take note of the sign and comply.

Reuven Cypers said he believes many retailers, large and small, need consultants to help guide them through the fine print of negotiating processing fees. Since 2001, his Los Angeles–based Associated Merchant Services, a division of Rocky Mountain ATM, has helped retailers find savings from several hundred dollars per month to $300,000 annually by knocking down processing fees.

One basic way to cut processing costs is to not lease credit card transaction machines from fee-processing companies. Cypers said buying machines often can be more reasonable than leasing. Buying a machine can cost $300, compared with leasing a machine, which can be $50 for a common period of 48 months. Like Van Dyke, he recommended nudging customers to use debit cards rather than higher-cost credit cards.

Associated Merchant Services consults with 2,500 merchants, and Cypers said business is growing. “When the economy is doing well, many merchants were not as concerned,” Cypers said about processing fees. “With the economy tightened so dramatically, everybody is concerned with how to save money and help the bottom line.”

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My Take: From a consumer’s point of view, I think they should reduce those damn fees because the merchant usually passes those fees on to the customer by raising their prices.  In never see merchants lowering their prices unless they’re trying to get rid of an overstock item or they are going out of business.  It would be nice to see one merchant who has the courage to follow one economic system.

That system is one that they teach in every economics class.  I believe they call it the “turnover” process.  (But do not quote me on this.)  The idea is very simple.  If you normally sell 20 widgets in a week at $5 a widget, that means you make $100 a week on widgets.  Let us say that the widget only cost you $2.50.  That means that your markup is 50% and you are making $50 profit every week.

How would you like to make $100 profit every week on the same widgets?  It is simple to do!  Usually when items are purchased in bulk, the larger the order, the smaller the cost.  If you normally purchased 20 widgets at a cost to you of $2.50 each, it is possible to order 40 widgets at $1.25, spending only $50.  This means that you could sell your widgets at $3.75, 75% of the price of your competitors, and make $100 in profit.

As you can see, you have doubled your profit and are now able to order and utilize those promotional bags to help increase your business.  This type of profit allows you to expand not only your business, but your advertising potential as well.  You might even be able use those recyclable poly bags and advertise your business as a “Green” business.

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What is Prom Night?

Did you know that “prom” stands for promenade?  In the US and Canada a prom is a formal or black-tie dance for high school students.  It is typically held at the end of junior and/or senior year.  At which time, every girl in the school will want prom dresses! In the United Kingdom, the term is more widely understood to be in reference to a season of classical concerts, or “proms,” which have been held between the months of July and September since 1895 and now broadcast on the BBC and people are usually where formal or evening dresses.