BISMARCK — When school nurse Josie Siddens starts her day, she makes sure to have the tools of her trade on hand: a stethoscope, thermometer, nebulizer and — what's come to be her most indispensable tool — a cellphone.

"It's a lifeline," said Siddens, who serves nearly 1,000 Bismarck-Henning students who are spread out in three buildings.

"Unfortunately, my job isn't just putting on Band-Aids anymore," Siddens continued. "We have kids who are asthmatics, have diabetes, take medication daily and have other serious health issues. If I'm at the grade school, and there's an emergency at another building, a teacher or a secretary can get a hold of me right away. I can start talking them through what needs to be done until I get there, and I can call the parents while I'm on the way."

This year, Siddens is one of a number of school nurses in Vermilion County who have these valuable tools thanks to Cellular One's ClassLink RN program.

The program provides free cellphones and service to school nurses that serve multiple buildings, which are sometimes miles apart. The nurses receive full keyboard texting phones with 500 minutes of calls, voice mail, unlimited incoming texts and 250 outgoing texts from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on school days each month.

The program is available to school nurses throughout Cellular One's 11-county service area, which also includes Clark, Clay, Coles, Crawford, Cumberland, Douglas, Edgar, Jasper, Lawrence and Richland counties.

Colleen Wright, Cellular One's assistant general manager, said the program was established at Northeast Elementary Magnet School in Danville in 1999.

She said the phone increased accessibility to the nurse, who also provided critical care to students in other buildings.

"Once we started checking into it, we found there was a need because many school nurses work in more than one building," Wright said. "One of them was the only nurse for 18 schools."

And with the financial issues facing school districts, she added, the company felt it was important to continue offering the free service to help ensure the health and safety of local students.

Sherri Smoot, a nurse in the Danville school district, has been involved in the program from the start and calls it priceless.

"I don't know what I'd do without it," said Smoot, who serves about 900 students at Edison, Garfield and Liberty elementaries.

Like her colleagues who also serve multiple buildings, she deals with everything from tending to cuts, scrapes, tummy aches and fevers to administering medicine to diabetics and hemophiliacs to dealing with severe allergy attacks, seizures and life-threatening crises on a daily basis.

"I'm able to get calls from staff, parents, health care providers," Smoot said. "If anyone needs to call me, I'm reachable no matter if I'm in another building or in between buildings. Being accessible gives me the opportunity to give the best service possible to the students and this district."