After the last Woodstock School District 200 School Board meeting, a friend of McHenry County Blog sent me the report below about the school clinic discussion.
School Clinic Would Prohibit Parental Knowledge, Permission
Since the same topic is on the agenda tonight, the information is still relevant.
Plans to open a Health Clinic inside the high school showed a crack in the foundation at the D200 Board of Education meeting Tuesday night.
For the past year Superintendent M.Moan and Board President C. Goodwin have promised “no contraception” services in the health clinic, so they were dismayed to learn IL State Law required ‘Family Planning’ services to children 12 years and older AND they’re required to provide pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing to children With No Parental Consent.
The Woodstock District 200 School Board.
Surprisingly two Board memberswant to go ahead with “as is” full service clinic.
P. Meyer stated we’ve come too far and the community really needs this, and W. Mattress stated it would be a greater break of trust to parents if we don’t open the full service health clinic.
Go figure.
Other Board members disagreed and seemed sincerely disappointed to learn they were forced to comply with state law in this matter.
However, members of the public brought this concern to the Board months ago.
In answer to questions of liability for conducting a full service health clinic on school grounds, Superintendent M.Moan has said in the past that liability is on the service provider, not us.
Hoping this setback with state law will be the S.O.S that rescues taxpayers from this folly wrapped in good intentions.
Woodstock Taxpayers need to let the Board know we have serious concerns with the cost of education now and CANNOT extend into health care with ALL the risk associated with it.
Have mercy!
Where to find the Clay Professional Development Center.
D200 Board will vote on Tuesday, Jan 26 at 7 pm at Clay Street School, Woodstock.
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This is the same issue with which the McHenry County Board was faced in the mid-1990’s.
The Health Department had a Federal Title X grant to dispense birth control drugs and devices.
A North Junior High School teacher, William Saturday, got very close with one of his students.
After she got to high school, they had an affair.
Saturday, apparently too cheap to buy condoms, took her to the Woodstock Health Department where she had a free shot of Depo-Provera, a three-month ovulation suppressant.
Bureaucratic rules for the Federal grant prohibit discrimination on the basis of age.
A 12-year old could get a condom or an IUD, for instance.
No parental approval was needed.
When Saturday decided he was going to get married, the high school girl approached the Crystal Lake Police and a wire tap was set up.
The girl got Saturday to admit to the affair and Saturday got sent to jail.
The public was outraged and put pressure on the County Board to get rid of Title X.
After a fierce fight, which made national news, McHenry County became the first (and I believe only) county in the country to get rid of the program.
Birth control was still provided, but parental consent was required for those under 18.
This decision so enraged Personal PAC, the biggest pro-abortion political action committee in Illinois, that it put a specific question about the subject on its questionnaires for County Board members.
Why not survey the public to see if they feel a need for the clinic?
In addition, ask the PARENTS of D200 students how they feel about the consent law.
Just b/c the clinic provides reproductive health services (pregnancy testing, birth control, STD testing)
Does not mean kids are going to have sex as a result.
Wake up folks!
The kids are already having sex, getting pregnant, and getting STDs.
And I bet many are not telling their parents.
Maybe D200 shouldn’t be in the health business in the minds of school board members.
But don’t use the parental consent law to reverse it.
That’s turning your back on the kids who really need it.
It simply is not the function of a school to be everything to everyone.
Our government school is supposed to be providing education, not healthcare.
This crazy wackjob idea that our schools should be providing health care is symptomatic of run away government.
Why on earth does Camille Goodwin think this is so needed?
Why is this liberal democrat on our school board?
More importantly, why are these officials trying to expand the role of a SCHOOL DISTRICT into the medical arena?
Wake up people!
It’s bad enough the school district is overtaxing us for two underutilized high schools, now they will be complaining about funding a medical facility.
What’s really at play here is liberals like Goodwin want to force more government and more liberal ideas down the throats of our children.
All at the expense of the taxpayers both economically and morally.
The Health Clinic is an entity separate from the school.
Your beef about parental consent is with state law, not the school or the clinic.
Being on the Task Force for the schools back in the early 2000’s, Woodstock North was to be a community asset, having perhaps a library open to the public, a school based health clinic, etc.
The public was aware of this and did have input.
There would be no contraception provided, but some testing might be done, but it would be minimal compared to the bulk of the care provided, which would include sports physicals, vaccinations, treatment for strep throat, rashes, earaches, and other such mundane illnesses.
It seems the group that steamrolled the school board is uninformed and misguided.
Should the space stay vacant, then?
What about all the money that was received and used to build out and supply the clinic?
Seems to me you threw the baby out with the bathwater.
If the clinic is to be funded from Title X Federal funds, then the beef is with the Federal regulations, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of age.
Marianne, this is a factually inaccurate description of the issue.
1. Medical professionals have legal obligation in Illinois to treat minors (who present as rational and mature) as consenting adult patients, and must respect their wishes for privacy. It would be unethical for one to deny contraception prescriptions if requested, and it would be unethical to inform parents again patient wishes.
The main reason this is so dangerous are the drug interactions and side effects possible from hormonal contraceptives usage.
And if the minor is unwilling to divulge the use to parents, it is likely that a primary care doctor will also be kept from knowing by the patient.
Minor patients are unlikely, on their own, to understand grave consequences of ignoring contraindications on a covertly taken medication.
2. There are many reasonably priced or free sources from which to obtain “sports physicals, vaccinations, treatment for strep throat, rashes, earaches, and other mundane illnesses”. Why should the general property D200 taxpaying public bear the financial cost burden (yes there are additional costs affiliated with the clinic) as well as the enormous liability cost burden of providing such services ?
Woodstock D200 spends an exorbitant amount per student annually.
That expenditure includes dozens of highly paid medical staff including speech therapists and psychologists.
Property tax rate in Woodstock is 4.6% of total home value, people are forced to pay enormous percentages (triple national average) of household income for property taxes which could be better spent on college funds for children.
The economic crisis in Woodstock and decline into poverty during the past 8 years is primarily due to this school board’s irresponsible borrowing and spending habits.
3. The money that was received and used to build the clinic was spent in haste and without due diligence by the board which would have revealed the clinic as a non-starter in the first place.
The space should not stay vacant.
The two half-full high schools should be combined in conjunction with the two-thirds empty Clay Academy to consolidate and save money for the families in this community who are struggling to survive and keep their homes and enough household income to provide for their children.
4. Why doesn’t D200 get a Task Force together NOW to deal with the financial crisis they have brought to this community?
The school taxes around 2.7% of total home value.
There is a capital appreciation bond coming due in a few years that will destroy us– we have every bit as much debt as 10 years ago, even though we have been paying $10 million a year annual debt service.
Compared to Huntley unit district 158, D200 spending is disgraceful by every metric. School spending has risen far in excess of inflation rates, hiring has risen by 24% in the decade…while enrollment has been FLAT.
Do some research.
Get a group together.
Let’s get a citizen group of intellectually honest people together and find a way to save our community from this crisis of debt, spending, and uninformed rushes into projects which haven’t been researched by those empowered to make them happen.