Virginia Panel Advances Plan for a Licensed Nurse in Every School by 2028

RICHMOND — Virginia schools could be required to put a licensed nurse in every building by July 1, 2028, under a legislative proposal the School Health Services Committee advanced in concept Wednesday — a move sponsors cast as overdue public-health infrastructure rather than a new fringe amenity.

State law already allows school divisions to hire nurses, but it does not require them. Roughly 8 percent of Virginia schools still operate without one. The draft policy would order each school board to provide at least one licensed school nurse per building or per 325 students, with two-year waivers for divisions that can document a good-faith hiring effort amid the statewide nursing shortage.

Senate Education and Health Committee Chair Barbara Favola, a Democrat from Arlington who also chairs the school health panel, called the measure a compromise and the core reason the committee exists. “At the end of the day, we have to allow our teachers and school administrators to teach and manage the school, and having a nurse allows them to do their job,” Favola said. “A nurse is there to help with health issues that more and more of our children are facing every day.”

Committee member Betsy Looney pushed back on the cartoon image of school nursing as band-aids and ice packs. She argued a nurse in every public school is the professional backbone needed to carry out health duties Virginia already piles onto schools — diabetes management, seizure protocols, medication administration, and emergency triage when a child collapses in a hallway.

Paula Nichols, school health administrator at Washington County Public Schools, told the panel by video that school nursing is public health in rural practice. During Hurricane Helene, she said, school nurses helped serve whole communities — not only students during the day — walking door to door with water and medical care through floodwater and helping run supply drives with local partners. “When the next emergency comes, and we know they always do, we need those relationships already in place,” Nichols said.

Workforce reality is the hard edge of the debate. Schools compete with hospitals, clinics, academic programs, and nursing homes for the same limited pool of licensed nurses, according to Virginia Department of Health Professions data cited in committee discussion. Stacy Haynie, a lobbyist for the Virginia School Board Association, supported the goal of nurses in buildings but warned that a mandate does not manufacture applicants. Even boards that budget for nurses, she said, sometimes cannot fill the jobs.

Favola said lawmakers are working on the shortage separately and still backed the nurse-per-building framework as the committee’s flagship ask for the 2027 General Assembly session. The next business meeting on November 18 will decide whether the proposal is formally recommended to Richmond for January bill drafting.

For suburban divisions with deep tax bases, the 2028 effective date looks like a planning horizon. For Southwest and Southside systems already stretching one nurse across multiple schools, the waiver language will decide whether the statute is a lifeline or a paperwork trap. Rural superintendents privately note that a two-year waiver still expires into the same labor market unless the state pairs the mandate with loan forgiveness, salary supplements, or shared regional nursing pools.

Parents who have watched diabetic elementary students wait for a traveling nurse to finish another campus will treat the proposal as basic safety. Teacher associations that have absorbed medical tasks into classroom duty will treat it as workload relief. School board budget chairs will treat it as a recurring line item that grows with enrollment and with union wage scales for licensed clinical staff.

The politics track Virginia’s larger school-health agenda: mental-health counselors, opioid reversal training, and infectious-disease protocols after measles scares in Northern Virginia. A nurse mandate sits at the intersection of those fights because the same licensed adult often becomes the first responder for asthma, anaphylaxis, and behavioral crises before an ambulance arrives.

Opponents of unfunded mandates will ask who pays when Standards of Quality funding does not follow the new headcount. Supporters will answer that Virginia has already assigned the duties; it simply refuses to staff them. That framing — duty without capacity — is what Favola’s committee is betting can survive a House and Senate that still argue over every K-12 dollar.

All Virginia News will watch the November 18 vote and whether Governor Abigail Spanberger’s education team signals support before bill numbers land in January. Until then, the 8 percent of schools without a nurse remain the baseline Virginia is choosing either to close or to paper over with waivers.

Email the Arlington County School Board:
Miranda Turner, miranda.turner@apsva.us,
Kathleen Clark, kathleen.clark2@apsva.us,
Monique Bryant, monique.bryant@apsva.us,
Zuraya Tapia-Hadley, zuraya.tapiahadley@apsva.us,
Bethany Zecher Sutton, bethany.zechersutton@apsva.us,

Email the Washington County School Board:
Jenny Nichols, jnichols@wcs.k12.va.us,
Debbie Anderson, danderso@wcs.k12.va.us,
Sandra Frederick, sandyf@wcs.k12.va.us,
Sanders Henderson, shenderson@wcs.k12.va.us,
Crystal Rasnake, cdrasnake@wcs.k12.va.us,
Adam Wilson, awilson@wcs.k12.va.us,
Andy Puckett, andyp@wcs.k12.va.us,