SANTA ANA : Trustees Asked to Back School Clinic

About 20 teachers and parents urged the Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Education this week to support the opening of a proposed school-based health clinic.

The clinic, which will be considered by the board next month, would focus on helping low-income elementary school students from kindergarten through the fifth grade whose learning might be impaired by inadequate health care, according to Lucinda G. Hundley, director of special education and health services.

Parents and teachers from Grant and Roosevelt elementary schools, which are in predominantly low-income areas of the city, said many children would benefit from such a clinic.

“We really need it because of the special needs of the students that we have in this community,” said Thais A. Sianz, a bilingual resource and kindergarten teacher at Grant.

“It’s a school with mostly Hispanics, a port-of-entry kind of school,” Sianz said. “There are many children with illnesses that would otherwise go unnoticed without some kind of health center.”

Late last year, the district conducted health screenings of first- and fifth-graders at Grant and Roosevelt to pinpoint health problems of students in low-income areas. Through the screenings, it was revealed that 88% of the students examined had some kind of health problem.

Gail Bower Greek, a fifth-grade teacher at Grant, told the board that the results did not surprise her.

“I have witnessed what goes on in the schools,” said Greek, who has taught in the district for 16 years. “It can be extremely intimidating (for parents) to try to seek help with only limited English skills and even more intimidating when there is money involved.”

The health-clinic proposal has drawn fire from a group of citizens who contend that such clinics inevitably end up distributing birth-control devices and making abortion referrals.

Earlier this month, Catholic Msgr. Jaime Soto, liaison to the Latino community for the Diocese of Orange, resigned from a 20-member clinic advisory panel because of this issue.

Hundley said the issues of contraception and abortion were addressed in a draft of the clinic’s policies after those opposed to the clinic demanded to know how the medical staff would respond if a pregnant minor sought advice.

In a letter to Supt. Rudy M. Castruita, Soto said he could no longer serve on the committee because it might appear that he had endorsed a draft of the policies.

Supporters of the proposed clinic told the board that they would like to see the district move forward with the plan despite the controversy.

“This is not a birth-control or abortion issue,” Greek said. “I resent the fact that this whole thing has been turned into a forum for negative issues that have nothing to do with the problem.”