Columnist Susan Snyder: Foundation’s objective is to educate

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 | 8:19 a.m.

All Nita Stern wants is 15 minutes in one classroom at each of Clark County's middle and high schools during one week in March.

She may as well ask for the moon.

"I sent 65 letters out to junior and high schools," Stern said. "I got one yes and a couple of maybes."

She received a fair amount of frustration, too.

Stern, who does public relations for the Arthritis Foundation, wants to tell youngsters about a summer camp for sufferers of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The national week for recognition and education about the condition is March 6-12.

Arthritis typically is considered an "old people's disease," but it affects about 1,500 children in Southern Nevada, Stern said. She learned firsthand about the struggles these children face while working at Camp Sol, a summer program hosted at Torino Ranch west of Las Vegas.

"I really saw how they suffer," she said.

One of the two 5 1/2-minute videos Stern wants to show in schools is about the Arthritis Foundation's walk-a-thon in April. The other features Camp Sol campers ages 7 to 17.

"One of (the girls) cried every night," Stern said. "She wouldn't change clothes in front of the other girls because of the weight gain from the steroids she was taking."

It's a worthy cause. But so are childhood obesity, drug abuse, drunken driving and other societal and health issues for which schools are the first stop.

The district receives so many requests to present information to pupils that it simply isn't possible to honor or even answer them all. District officials said Stern headed down the right track by contacting schools individually.

But even then, there is no guarantee of classroom time. Schools no longer are the community's clearinghouses.

The instructional day is tight. In many schools, art, music, recess and physical education exist only in the memories of pupils' parents.

Time spent in an assembly or in front of a video is time taken from reading and math. And that, Rosanna Gallagher said, just can't happen any more than it already does.

"They've really cut down on assemblies," said Gallagher, of the district's instructional division. "They're very, very careful because it cuts down on instructional time."

And with mandatory testing and requirements set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act, every 15 minutes of class time is precious.

It helps if a subject can be tied to curriculum studied by a particular grade level or can be promoted through the school's counselor or nurse, Gallagher said.

Stern says although one video promotes the walk-a-thon, both show how arthritis affects those afflicted. She also provides written supplements and answers questions.

One high school declined her presentation. But one high school and one middle school accepted, and officials at a second middle school will show the videos and distribute the information. Decisions are pending from others.

"What we really want to do is raise awareness," Stern said. "(Statistics show) 1 in 3 of them has someone in their lives who has it."

For information: www.arthritis.org.