The District 87 school board is considering the prospect of school-based health care.
The district already collaborates with providers like OSF HealthCare and Carle Health to provide occasional services at school, but the latest idea is about a clinic part-time, or eventually during all school days, at Bloomington High School.
Assistant superintendent Nicole Rummel explained how the program could function at the school board's meeting this week. The clinic would use space allotted in the Bloomington Area Career Center [BACC], Rummel said. School nurses would remain and refer cases to the clinic as needed. Students would need parental consent to use its services.
A school-based clinic is not without precedent in Central Illinois. Examples exist in Peoria and Champaign-Urbana, with some expanding to serve adults unrelated to the school population. For starters, though, the clinic would focus on expanding access to care for students.
“Some of our families don’t have reliable transportation or don’t have a primary care doctor,” Rummel said. “And so for the district to be able to provide transportation across the district to get kids to the clinic and get them the services they need, I think will be a huge benefit to our families.”
Helping students who face barriers to care stay healthy and stay in school is a key goal of school-based health care. Rummel acknowledged some families may not want to use it, and parental consent would be required.
The idea of a clinic wasn’t up for a vote on Wednesday, but may advance to that stage later.
There will be logistical matters to handle, like transporting students from other District 87 schools to the clinic and helping students navigate insurance. According to Rummel, the district’s been in touch with a local medical provider interested in participating, but couldn’t yet identify them.
Immigration enforcement
After at Wednesday’s meeting, Superintendent David Mouser talked about the district’s policies regarding immigration enforcement in schools.
Schools have historically been off limits for immigration enforcement. That all changed when, almost as soon as he took office, President Trump got rid of a decades-old policy that prevented agents from arresting migrants without legal status in sensitive places such as schools, hospitals and churches.
“Our schools are secure. We’re not going to have folks coming in and taking students out of our schools without us having a court order and having those discussions,” Mouser said. “And so everything would come through the [school] administration at that point.”
Mouser said the issue hasn’t come up since the policy change was announced, but he stressed that neither immigration enforcement nor anyone else would be given access without legal orders.
