LETTER: In praise of school nurses

On behalf of the Cumberland County School Nurses Association, I would like to recognize and celebrate school nurses throughout our area on May 9, National School Nurse Day. The theme this year is “School Nurses: Advocates for 21st Century Student Health.”

School nurses take on a wide variety of roles every day. For many children, the school nurse is the only health professional they may have access to, except in emergencies. According to the Centers for Disease Control, asthma is the leading chronic illness among children and adolescents in the United States. On average, in a classroom of 30 children, about three are likely to have asthma. Further, childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30SAN JOSE, Calif. — Climate experts have seen the future of America's breadbasket — and from their perspective, it doesn't look pretty.

"I don't want to be a wheat farmer in Kansas in the future," said Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma.

Brooks isn't a wheat farmer. He's a researcher who has analyzed how climate change could affect the weather in America's midsection, based on historical data and computer modeling. Last year, he and his colleagues found that tornado patterns are becoming more variable — with severe storms coming in bunches or not at all.

There's more variability in the long-term weather outlook as well, Brooks said this month in San Jose during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement