TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2009 (copyright 2009 Texas AFT)   * Federal Legislation Filed to Put More Nurses in Schools--You Can Help, Too * AFT Professional-Issues Conference Features U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan   Bill Filed in Congress to Lower Student-to-School-Nurse Ratio: Students need school nurses to tend to their health-care needs, but too many schools are not appropriately staffed with enough school nurses. A new bill by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, would provide grant money to states for the purpose of improving the ratio of school nurses to students. The bill is H.R. 2730. You can e-mail a letter to your own U.S. House member, urging him or her to support this legislation, by visiting the AFT Legislative Action at http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/staffing070108.   The letter you'll find at that site makes a strong case for H.R. 2730, noting that 10 to 20 percent of the nation's 52 million students have chronic health problems, and 5.6 percent receive prescription medications during the school day. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in 39 percent of schools nationwide someone other than a school nurse administers student medications. With too few school nurses on staff, schools are creating an unsafe situation for students. The average student-to-nurse ratio in our schools nationwide is 1,155 to one. That means many school nurses are being asked to cover multiple schools, often far apart.  Often unbeknownst to parents, many students have only a part-time school nurse or no nurse at all assigned to their school.   AFT QuEST Conference Features U.S. Education Secretary: A town-hall-style forum with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a panel with unionized charter-school teachers are among the featured events at the American Federation of Teachers' QuEST (Quality Educational Standards in Teaching) conference on July 13-15 in the nation's capital.   Secretary Duncan will field questions from the audience of some 1,500 teachers and other school staff. Also on the agenda is Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a nationally recognized expert on teacher quality and evaluation. Another session will focus on various types of community schools, which provide after-school and evening academic, social, and community services to disadvantaged students and their families.   Charter-school teachers will attend QuEST and speak on panels about their newly organized unions, discussing how their union contract guarantees fair treatment and educator voice while maintaining their charter school's mission of innovation and achievement. Panelists will include teachers from KIPP AMP in Brooklyn, New York; Green Dot New York Charter School in the Bronx; Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston; and Accelerated Charter High School in Los Angeles.   The conference also will offer scores of workshops taught by experts on teaching and learning issues. Topics include handling classroom discipline, best practices for teaching math and reading, teaching English language learners, improving middle schools, bridging the achievement gap in high school, recruiting and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff areas, and teacher evaluation.