Not really a school nurse?

Hernando County officials say a school employee lied about being an LPN.

By TOM MARSHALL, Times Staff Writer
Published September 21, 2007

BROOKSVILLE -- She gave out Band-Aids and cough drops, and even inserted catheters and feeding tubes for special-needs students -- just like a real school nurse.

Except she wasn't one, state officials said.

On Thursday, 42-year-old Jean Sciacovelli was in the Hernando County Jail in lieu of 5,000 bail, charged with unlicensed practice of a health care profession, a third-degree felony. And Hernando County School Board officials were wondering how she slipped through their hiring system.

For a year, starting in August 2006, Sciacovelli worked as a health care aide at Deltona Elementary School, doing all the things school nurses do. Within a month of getting hired, she even faxed a copy of what she said was a brand-new Florida certificate identifying her as a licensed practical nurse to the district's human resources office, earning a $1,396.53 pay raise on her annual salary of $12,204.15.

Florida Department of Health investigators say that license was forged. Sciacovelli is accused of filling in her own name on another person's certificate. She was arrested after she applied for a job with a Brooksville company, Maxim Healthcare Services, which checked and didn't find her name in a state registry.

That was an easy step that Hernando's human resources office could have taken, said a Health Department spokeswoman.

"You can go in as a citizen and do a license lookup, or if you have a name, you can find a practitioner profile," said deputy press secretary Eulinda Jackson. "It's up to the employer to research and find out if they're legitimate. Especially to maintain and protect the safety of Floridians, we encourage them to check that."

And Sciacovelli was working in a particularly sensitive position, since Deltona serves as a center for special-needs students. Among its population of 971 students are "medically-challenged students" who require tube feeding and other types of special care, said Heather Martin, the district's executive director of business services.

District officials had no clue that Sciacovelli's nursing license might not be genuine. But they didn't reappoint her to a second year last spring, after officials discovered that she hadn't disclosed an arrest, Martin said.

Police records show Sciacovelli was arrested April 7 on shoplifting charges, and the district sent her a non-reappointment notice three days later.

Martin said the district didn't require applicants to hold an LPN certificate, since it provides nurse training with the Hernando County Health Department. But she acknowledged the district never verified the Florida certificate when it was presented.

"We did not check it from the licensing agency to see if it was valid," Martin said. "You can be assured that will not happen again because we will start looking at that."

The district also missed several inconsistencies in Sciacovelli's employment application.

There was no record of the New York nurse's license she told Hernando officials about, and investigators with the state Health Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have found no evidence of one.

And while Sciacovelli told the district that her Florida license was being issued in August 2006, the certificate she eventually faxed was issued in 2005.

Hernando officials said they knew of no parent complaints about Sciacovelli's performance at Deltona and said the gaps in her application weren't apparent, except in hindsight.

"She obviously has a history of being deceitful," Martin said.

If convicted, Sciacovelli faces up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Tom Marshall can be reached at tmarshall@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1431.

[Last modified September 21, 2007, 02:42:29]