District HomeEnrollJump/KeywordCareers

Health -

District HomeEnrollJump/KeywordCareers

Health -

Home
Parent Information
Show submenu for
From left, Sara Stoner, Megan Lytle and Wendy Rau sit next to each other at a table in a conference room. There is a district map of Lincoln Public Schools on a side wall behind them. There is a copy of the research paper they produced laying on the table in front of them.

Supportive Solutions: LPS school nurses write national paper highlighting healthy outcomes

Lincoln Public Schools

February 28, 2025

School nurses across the country are helping children feel better thanks to the academic insights of three Lincoln Public Schools employees.
 
Wendy Rau, Sara Stoner and Megan Lytle have co-authored a paper that shows how LPS school nurses support social, emotional and behavioral health needs of students. The National Association of School Nurses (NASN) published the trio’s research in the peer-reviewed clinical resource journal NASN School Nurse.
 
Rau, Stoner and Lytle said they were excited by what they heard from fellow school nurses who read the article. Rau is the LPS director of health services, Lytle is a district health services coordinator and Stoner is a school nurse at Goodrich Middle School.
 
“We’ve had really positive feedback from this,” Lytle said. “We’ve had people from across the country ask us, ‘Can you share the tools you’re using?’”
 
The LPS health services department began implementing MTSS in 2017 after reviewing data from thousands of student visits.
 
“Our data really showed us that we needed to start including social-emotional services to help students,” Rau said.
 
“Whether it was elementary school, middle school or high school, the top two reasons that students would visit health offices was either headaches or stomachaches,” Lytle said. “We knew that those were likely symptoms of something more that was happening at an emotional level such as anxiety or stress.”
 
“We’re getting to the heart of the problem,” Stoner said. “They can stop and think about the questions as they’re filling out the form, and once we find that out, we can provide calming strategies for them to use.”
 
Rau said the calming tools and support strategies are making noticeable impacts. Health office visits across LPS dropped by 15.6 percent from the first quarter of the 2022-23 school year to the first quarter of 2023-24.
 
“We are light years ahead of most districts when it comes to MTSS,” Rau said. “It’s been a really good thing for our students.”
 
Do you have a story idea? Share it with the LPS Communications Team by filling out this form!