Three school health centers to close

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 | 11:07 a.m.

The doors of three campus health centers providing services to thousands of students will be abruptly shut next week after the Clark County School Board balked Thursday at letting a private company to take over operations.

The centers, located at Martin Middle School, C.P. Squires Elementary School and Valley High School, are currently overseen by the Clark County Health District. But the federal grant money providing for those services runs out Tuesday, district officials said.

Nevada Health Centers, a nonprofit organization that offers low-cost and no-cost health care to homeless and low-income individuals, secured a separate federal grant that would allow it to take over the health centers. But the deal still needed the blessing of the School Board, and members were less than pleased at both the timing and the terms of the deal presented at Thursday's meeting.

County officials notified the schools in December that the grant money was near an end and recommended Nevada Health Centers to take over the contract, said Dusty Dickens, director of zoning, demographics and real property for the district. For the past few months Dickens, whose office oversees the contracts for the school-based health centers, has been hammering out the details with the organization.

The campus health centers offer immunizations, vision and hearing screening and physical exams required for participation in extracurricular activities. The centers have been lauded for reducing absenteeism due to illness and for helping children whose only other health care option has often been the local emergency room.

Several School Board members questioned why they were just being informed of the situation with the impending closure of the health centers just days away. The timing put tremendous pressure on the board to approve the deal despite their misgivings, said member Susan Brager-Wellman.

"We know kids can't learn unless they're healthy," Brager-Wellman said. "None of us wants to think kids are going to show up (at the health center) and be turned away."

Thursday's meeting was the earliest district staff was able to get the item onto the agenda, Dickens said.

School Board member Sheila Moulton said she was worried that as a private company, Nevada Health Centers might stray from the district's own mandates regarding sex education and a prohibition on providing any "family planning."

The organization's chief medical officer, Dr. Carl Heard, attempted to reassure the School Board.

"We provide no reproductive health services," Heard said. "If someone comes to us we refer them out."

Heard also responded to Moulton and member Denise Brodsky's concerns that as a private company his organization does not have to hold open meetings about its activities and the School Board's involvement and influence would be limited.

Nevada Health Centers' board of directors would welcome input from the School Board and the district, Heard said. And an advisory board that would include school community leaders is being formed, he said.

His explanations seemed to do little to quell Moulton's concerns.

"I feel very strongly about this and I need to have more information and more time," said Moulton, whose motion to delay the decision on the contract until March 10 was approved.

If the School Board approves the contract at that meeting, the health centers could be reopened as quickly as the following day, Heard said. In the interim, signs could be posted on the doors directing students to the nearest community health center, Heard said.

"We hope the disruption to services will be minimal," Heard said.

Nevada Health Centers has about a half-dozen sites throughout the state, including rural clinics, four community centers in Southern Nevada and mobile units providing a variety of services from dental care to mammographies.