A St. Paul school nurse has been suspended without pay for 10 days for forgetting about a sick elementary school student in her office.
The student, whose age was not given, fell asleep on a nurse’s office cot at Mississippi Creative Arts School and missed the bus ride home, according to a discipline letter. The child was left alone for about 90 minutes before her worried parent called the school.
Barb Herman, who has worked for St. Paul Public Schools for 20 years, said in an interview that it was the first time she’d forgotten about a student. She returned to work Wednesday after serving the final day of her suspension.
According to a March 3 discipline letter from interim director of specialized services Alecia Mobley, the student went to see Herman around 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 6 with a temperature of 102.3.
The girl’s parent arranged for her grandmother to pick her up, but Herman suggested the girl wait and take the bus home because the school day was almost over.
The child fell asleep on a cot in the nurse’s office. When the school day ended at 4 p.m., Herman went to an after-school meeting.
She returned to her office at 4:45 p.m., turned off the lights, closed the door and left for the day, forgetting about the child until the principal notified her the next day.
The student woke up and left the office at 5:09 p.m. after a school staffer, alerted by the child’s parent, sent a message over the loudspeaker.
The girl was diagnosed with strep throat and a high fever and stayed home from school the rest of the week.
Herman said that whenever a student comes to her office during the last hour of a school day, she sets a timer so she doesn’t forget there’s someone in her cot room. But that day, her routine was broken by a second student who showed up to her office unaccompanied by an educational assistant — in violation of his special-education plan, she said.
“I believe that it never would have happened had this kid been escorted. I’ve never forgotten a kid in 20 years. I got interrupted that day,” she said.
Herman said she felt the 10-day suspension was overly harsh but did not contest it.