Everybody in the pool!
That’s the motto at the Kunsberg School for Chronically Ill Children on the campus of National Jewish Medical and Research Center.
More than 70 kids with a variety of medical issues attend grades K-8 at the school. A majority of them have asthma, so swimming in a warm pool strengthens the lungs and heart — and the moisture eases the symptoms.
Dan Moran, 14, is in eighth grade, his fifth year in the school. This is how he sums up Kunsberg: “They teach you how to swim, and they teach you how to treat your asthma.”
“It’s OK,” says Brittney Johnson, 10, a fourth-grader. “But some days you don’t want to go swimming.”
These kids all have “some days.”
Dr. Gary Cott, executive vice president of Medical and Clinical Service, says that when students first come to Kunsberg, they have as many as seven urgent medical episodes a year.
“In two years here, we can drop that dramatically” through education and training the students how to care for themselves and deal with their health issues, he says.
Along with asthma, students suffer from illnesses including cystic fibrosis, severe allergies, sickle cell anemia, cancer and HIV. Kunsberg students tend to be poor and very sick — and many also suffer from bipolar disorder, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, behavioral disorders and obesity.
The organization has applied for funding from this year’s Post-News Season to Share campaign.
Kunsberg appears to be like any school sailing through the day, until you see the small girl walking into the gym unnoticed, wheeling an oxygen tank behind her. Before exercise, students stop by the nurse’s station to receive medication.
Class size is about 13. Teachers, most of whom have master’s degrees, follow the Denver Public Schools study plan — so the students can transition back to public schools after a few years at Kunsberg. That’s the goal: to get the kids back into the system.
“We want them to understand that there is a different life,” Cott says. “These kids have been ostracized, they sit in the corner wheezing, they use an inhaler, they’re seen as different. Here they do better, they feel better.”
In addition to teachers, Kunsberg is staffed with registered nurses and a full-time social worker.
There is no charge to be a student at Kunsberg. The $1.5 million annual budget comes from the hospital and private and corporate donations and grants. The students come from eight separate school districts in the Denver area.
It is believed to be the only school of its type in America and one day may become a model of how to educate and improve the lives of chronically ill children in other cities.
Yet it remains a bit of a well-kept secret in Denver.
“A lot of kids come here with a lot of baggage that makes it hard for them to succeed, even if they have the intelligence to do it,” Cott says. “We’re starting the process of making these kids successful students and citizens.”
Kunsberg School for Chronically Ill Children
National Jewish Medical and Research Center
Address: 1400 Jackson St., Denver
In operation since: 1977
Number served last year: 84
Staff: 15
Yearly budget: $1.5 million
Percentage of funds going directly to clients: 75 percent
