The Lansing School District is hiring medical assistants to provide support inside and outside its classrooms.
The positions are needed to help the district’s nurses and educational staff, officials say, as schools cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical assistants may be asked to help with the district’s COVID-19 protocols, oversee observation rooms for students who are sick, and interact with parents. The contracted positions pay $20 per hour and run through June 30.
The positions are among more than 90 jobs, including lunch assistants, teachers, educational assistants, and secretaries, posted since school started this year.
“We are doing really well. We interviewed 24 medical assistant applications last week and we are interviewing a lot more this week,“ Superintendent Ben Shuldiner said. “We feel very confident that we are going to be able to fill the jobs within the next couple of weeks.”
Shuldiner said these positions were created in response to the pandemic and mitigation strategies put in place as students in the district return to classrooms. He said assistants help keep everyone safe by doing rapid testing, promoting washing hands, and promoting mask use.
Shuldiner also says that there are new mitigation strategies taken to help the nurses and the schools themselves. The school district should be fully staffed in the next two weeks, which will help relieve pressure off of nurses and teachers.
Lansing School District spokesperson Robert Kolt said the assistants will help school nurses by taking over some duties.
“We don’t want the nurses taking up their important time doing things that a non-medical assistant could help with,” Kolt said. “It would be recording information, maybe some contact tracing, responding to any sort of family requests. So we have a half-dozen nurses and they just need some assistance.”
School officials are looking for candidates with a high school diploma or equivalent as well as degrees or certificates in areas such as emergency medical technician, nurse assistant, licensed practical nurse, and nurse assistant. The job posting can be viewed at https://lansingschools.tedk12.com/hire/viewjob.aspx?jobid=661