Healthcare Services

The proposed regional nursing model is a staffing approach that assigns nurses to groups of schools rather than automatically placing one nurse at every school campus. The goal is to align nursing coverage with student medical needs (acuity) while maintaining safety, responsiveness, and long-term sustainability.

In an acuity model of service, the district would be divided into six regions. Each region would be staffed by 9-11 nurses. Each region would have a lead nurse who would deploy staff to schools based on need. For example, if special care or medication needs to be provided to a student, a nurse would go to that school and provided the needed support.

There may be some schools that have a full-time nurse, based on level of student need.

In the current ASD model, one nurse is assigned to each school. In practice, however, not every school has a nurse on site every day. This is largely due to  vacant positions and daily absences that the district cannot cover with a limited pool of substitute nurses.

For example, during the first week of February 2026, there were between 11 and 17 nurse absences each day. Only some of those shifts were able to be filled by substitute nurses, resulting in 6-11 schools without an on-site nurse on any given day. When this occurs, nurses from other schools often provide coverage, balancing the needs of their own school while supporting another campus.

This approach mirrors how an acuity-based model would function, with nurses assigned to a region and deployed based on student health needs.

Note: Charter schools determine their own staffing levels based on their individual budgets.

ASD currently has one nurse assigned to each school. Under the proposed model, schools and nurses would be grouped into regions. Nurses would visit schools in their assigned region based on student health needs (acuity).

Other large Alaska school districts (Mat Su, Fairbanks, Juneau and Kenai) use a range of nursing models. In all cases, nursing staff serve multiple schools, and none of these districts assign one nurse to every school districtwide.