Walking around Pinole Valley’s Campus, you may have noticed that there’s a few rooms that are vacant. Not anymore! The district decided to move a bunch of their district people to Pinole Valley. We had an opportunity to get to know all these new people, sharing exactly which departments moved in, and what they do. 

C212 District Nurses 

One of the rooms that have been taken up is room C212, right next to the legend Mr. Snaith. These people are the district nurses. When you think of school nurse, you typically think of a single nurse that’s there for ice packs, and doesn’t seem to do much besides that. The impact that these nurses have is much more than that. They handle the students with chronic illnesses, which affect their learning abilities at school. Between the nine of them, they handle around 500 students on a daily basis. 

Ideally, if a student suffers something right then and there, their designated nurse would provide support to them. However, since all these students are at various schools, the team of nurses end up traveling from school to school, making it impossible for them to be available to all their cases at all times, but that doesn’t stop them from being able to provide support to someone over the phone. 

How do the nurses feel about being moved to Pinole Valley High? Well, since this interview took place the day after they moved in, there isn’t much for them to note on yet. But they did mention that since they do travel to schools on a daily basis to check up on students, being in this environment isn’t anything new for them. That doesn’t give you an excuse to go fool around C212, so stay courteous to our new residents at Pinole Valley!

Want to know more? https://www.wccusd.net/Page/417

C310 WATR 

In room C310, you can find the WATR department. Despite the name, You won’t find any plumbers here, but instead you can see the West Contra Costa Assistive Technology Resources team. There are two parts to this crew; one focuses on Assistive Technologies, like braille or subtitles, and the other works with Alternative or Augmentative Communications, for example helping students who can’t move their mouths to talk.

Well, what do they think of our school? The WATR team think Pinole Valley is a great campus, they love our staff, and they say it’s the best school in the district for disabled students. They say the staff is supportive and it’s a good environment for special needs students. They think PV will be a good place for them, Let’s do our best as students to make their workplace enjoyable.

Would you like to get to know them better? https://www.wccusd.net/Page/49