School Nurse

The School Nurse provides health care, screening, and follow-up for students in Billerica's public schools. The School Physician urged the hiring of a nurse for several years after diphtheria and infantile paralysis epidemics, and a state requirement led the town to appoint its first school nurse, Mary I. Nugent, on September 1, 1921. A single nurse served the schools until 1952, when a second was added; by the 1970s a staff of a dozen nurses was supervised by a School Nurse Supervisor. School nurses later organized as a bargaining unit affiliated with the Billerica Federation of Teachers.