Nurses Are on the Virus Front Lines. But Many Schools Don’t Have One.

Washington State is one of the places where nurses are a rarity in school hallways, with 7 percent of schools employing one full time, and nearly 30 percent of districts having one available for no more than six hours per week. Like Ms. Benzel, many are being asked to do more than ever before, with little in the way of new resources, training or backup.

In some places, administrators have been scrambling to get more nurses into schools. New York City, the nation’s largest district and one of the few big cities planning to physically reopen its schools on the first day back, went on a hiring spree after the city’s powerful teachers’ union said its members should not return to classrooms without a nurse in each of the city’s roughly 1,300 school buildings.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week that the city had finally secured enough nurses to fulfill that demand, less than a month before the scheduled start of in-person instruction.

Those nurses will be charged with evaluating children for coronavirus symptoms and determining whether they should report to an isolation room away from other students and staff members, and communicating with parents already anxious about dropping their children off at school.

“It’s weird that it takes a pandemic for people to be like, ‘Oh, look at that, what you do is useful,’” said Tara Norvez, a school nurse in Queens. Ms. Norvez said she was looking forward to the start of the school year, as long as there was enough personal protective equipment and other safety measures in place.