School District Still Backs Health Clinic : Education: Despite protests, San Diego trustees reiterate their stance on the facility proposed for Hoover High.

The San Diego Unified School District board Tuesday reiterated its support for establishing a controversial health and social services clinic at Hoover High School after hearing testimony from dozens of people at a board meeting.

“Health is fundamental. Reading and writing are, too. But they are probably of little value if you are dead,” Trustee Shirley Weber told a packed boardroom in expressing her support for the clinic.

Trustees Susan Davis, Sue Braun and Ann Armstrong also restated their approval of the project, which was first proposed 2 1/2 years ago.

Earlier this month, Hoover High School received $40,000 from two foundations to pay for a nurse practitioner and a doctor from Children’s Hospital and Health Center of San Diego to operate a primary care clinic. The clinic would be the first of its kind in the county, offering basic medical care to students at the school.

The clinic would also house a variety of social services from public and community-based organizations, including counseling on child abuse prevention and drug and alcohol abuse, family counseling, parent education and gang-violence prevention.

The long-planned clinic has been controversial since it was approved in concept by the board in May, 1989, when the board stipulated that no district money would be used for the project.

School and Children’s Hospital officials expect that Medi-Cal will reimburse the school for the supervising doctor, making the clinic self-sustaining.

The presence of a supervising physician will allow the nurse to provide treatment, order lab tests and carry out other medical procedures. Regular school nurses are not allowed to treat even the most routine illnesses and are even prohibited from distributing aspirin.

Opponents of the clinic, most notably the Catholic Church, feared that students might be referred to agencies off campus that offer birth control or abortion counseling.

Michaelene Jenkins of the California Pro-Life Council said that, if the clinic were allowed to open, it would be “only the beginning” of what would eventually lead to abortion counseling and providing contraceptives.

Jenkins also argued that, by providing lists of agencies that conduct abortions, the schools would be making choices for the students that should be made by parents.

“Not only does the clinic provide objectionable services and referrals, it infringes on the rights of parents” to raise their children in the way they wish, Jenkins said.

“The diocese regrets that it cannot support this proposal,” Rosemary Johnson of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego told the board. “Students are ill-served when they are referred to organizations that offer abortion counseling and contraception as a solution to teen pregnancy.”

But Brian Bennett, principal of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic School in the Mid-City area, told the board that he supports the formation of a clinic at Hoover High.

“I don’t believe from a personal point of view that we can walk away from this as a possible solution to the urgent needs of children,” said Bennett, who supported the clinic after receiving assurances from district superintendent Tom Payzant that there will be no abortion counseling or distribution of contraceptives at the clinic.

Payzant said the issue of abortion and pregnancy counseling is a moot one.

“The practice of referrals goes on in every high school in this city and has for years,” he said.

When asked for medical information, schools offer students lists that include “a cross-section of agencies that represent a complete range of values and orientations on issues that are continually being discussed,” Payzant told the audience.

The parent-teacher committee that is planning the clinic decided earlier this year that it would offer no contraceptives and provide no abortion or family-planning counseling.

Studies done by medical planners for Hoover administrators two years ago showed that 41% of Hoover students have no medical insurance coverage and that more than a third of the students use the school nurse as their primary source of medical care.

Board member Susan Davis, a supporter of the clinic, said the lengthy process that Hoover has had to endure and the initial uncertainty of funding may have discouraged other schools from pursuing the idea.

“I think that they have been waiting to see what happens here,” Davis said. “I don’t know of any school community that is not supportive of the concept itself.”

John De Beck, the only board member opposing the clinic, said he agrees that there is a need for health services, but that he does not believe that the schools should be the ones providing them.

The board will take a final vote on the clinic Nov. 12.