August 15, 2008 - West Region Annual Report

West Region Annual Report

West Region SNANC has enjoyed a very good year. Membership chairperson, Delores Parris reports a total membership of 59. We have seen great growth in the number of school nurse positions this year. There are 114.5 fte's in the west with 112 full time and four part-time school nurses. That is a gain of 34 nurses with most of them being hired by Buncombe County, who now has four fulltime positions in Asheville City Schools and 17 in Buncombe County Schools. Burke County now has 13 school nurses. Swain County has gone from one lone school nurse to six nurses. Haywood County is steady with nine positions while McDowell now has eight positions, and Clay County finally has two full time nurses! According to Eileen Benson, West Region School Nurse Consultant, "Life is good in the Western Region". We now look forward to recruiting all these new nurses into our SNANC membership and linking each one to a mentor.

West SNANC continues to have fall and spring meetings hosted by different counties each year. This past year we have traveled to Spruce Pine hosted by nurses from Avery and Mitchell counties and to Murphy hosted by Cherokee County nurses. These nurses all did an excellent job arranging meetings that were packed with information, updates, entertainment, good food, good exercise and good networking opportunities. Pertinent and informative programs on topics such as "The Bully-Free School", Immunization Updates, Prevent Blindness Updates, as well as Tobacco-Second Hand Smoke were presented. Delicious lunches and snacks were provided at no cost of participants. Raffles were held at each meeting to raise money.

Our treasurer's report at the last meeting showed a balance of $1,098.65. Approximately $300.00 was raised during the raffle at the meeting to be added to the balance.

The next scheduled West SNANC meeting will be hosted by Macon County School Nurses in Franklin. Burke County will host the spring 2009 meeting. Officers to fill the expiring terms this year will be elected and officially installed at the fall meeting.