Countywide : Schools Urged to Enforce Health Law

The Orange County Grand Jury has recommended that school districts bar first-graders from classes if they have not been medically screened.

Under state law, children who enter the first grade must undergo a health screening. However, the state law does not have enforcement provisions that would forbid children to attend school if they don’t receive the exams. The screenings catch medical problems such as hearing loss that could affect a child’s ability to learn.

The grand jury questioned the lack of enforcement in the state law and advocated that the county’s public schools should enforce the law themselves as they do with immunization. The report also recommended that Orange County Supt. of Schools John F. Dean urge state legislators to make the physical examinations mandatory for school entry.

Some school officials expressed wariness toward the recommendation.

“The implication is that this would foreclose kids from education, especially those who are the least likely to have access to physical examinations,” said Anthony Dalessi, assistant superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District. “They are our at-risk kids.”

To complete its finding, the jury surveyed 25 districts and asked school officials whether they complied with the state law. The survey showed that 72% of first-graders in the county had been medically screened. However, in some school districts, such as Santa Ana and Orange Unified, the number of students medically screened dropped to 50%.

The grand jury report expressed shock that the state law had no enforcement.

“The most astonishing discovery was that state law makes no provision to enforce the law. When asked if the school excluded those children not in compliance, all replied, ‘no.’ State law does not require exclusion, and for some districts, their own policy forbids it,” the report says.

Dean said he agrees philosophically with the grand jury’s findings. However, he said, schools cannot be social agencies and be entirely responsible for a child’s health.

“We already have the immunization program in place,” Dean said. “This is one more demand to schools. We would hope that health agencies and doctors play a role in this as well.”

Buena Park School District Supt. Jack Townsend said that school districts are already trying to make sure students are healthy. But Townsend said schools cannot enforce the state law entirely by themselves.

“We’re educators, not policemen,” Townsend said. “It is more important for a child to be in school rather than stay home.”

Dalessi said that a number of children in the Santa Ana district do not readily have access to health clinics.

“Often, these children are from families who have transportation and economic difficulties that prevent them from going to clinics,” Dalessi said. “And there are some children who are from cultures that have no perception of medical prevention. They don’t go to the doctor unless they are really sick.”

Dalessi said Santa Ana has already moved forward in reinforcing health plans for its students by creating its mobile health clinic, which was approved by the district’s trustees on May 14.

Gerald Wagner, Orange County director of the Child Health and Disability Prevention Program, said he agreed with the grand jury’s recommendation for mandatory screenings. Schools should help families realize that there are free and nearby clinics that can provide health care to children, Wagner said. The prevention program relies on schools to distribute the clinic information to families, he added.

“This can only help in raising the protection level of the children,” Wagner said.