Bills Aim to Make Students Healthier

Concerned that many California students are struggling in the classroom because they are ill, state lawmakers this year are advancing a package of legislation to improve the health of children in public schools.

Capping eight months of work and four hearings around the state, the Select Committee on California Children’s School Readiness and Health has released a report that links poor classroom performance with health problems.

Though the report’s findings are largely based on anecdotal evidence, lawmakers concluded that more empirical studies are needed--and so are measures that ensure California children are sound of body and mind as they try to learn.

“We have to consider school health in an academic framework,” said Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Alameda), the lawmaker leading the push.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Chan said, school health programs were largely limited to immunizing children against polio and other contagious diseases. Though that has begun to change, she said, government is still doing far too little to help poor parents make sure children are ready to learn when they enter the classroom--even as the state spends more money trying to improve academic performance.

“One of the greatest and most hurtful challenges is watching a kid who is ill, sitting in that seat, trying to learn,” said Nancy Waltz, a union representative at the San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento County who spent 24 years as a teacher. Waltz spoke on behalf of the California Teachers Assn., one of the state’s most powerful labor unions, which supports the package of bills.

A number of the proposals, which have only recently been introduced, seek to improve access to existing government efforts, such as encouraging more schools to apply for school breakfast programs. And some would force health maintenance organizations to foot more bills by requiring HMOs that contract with the state to cover the costs of prenatal exams, to name one example.

But many of the measures seek to create new or greatly expanded programs--including bolstering dental care for children without health coverage, increasing funding for early treatment of mental health problems and training preschool teachers to spot problems--and would clearly cost money.

At a time when California is facing a projected $17.5-billion budget shortfall, Chan concedes that expanding social services will almost certainly prove difficult.

Last year, a similar effort to tackle problems in the state’s foster care system largely fizzled when money for the proposed enhancements dried up.

In perhaps its most explosive recommendation, the school readiness report makes a passing reference to a proposed tax on soft drinks being promoted by state Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) as a possible funding source for some of the school health improvements.

But Chan, who has written legislation to study whether to tax junk foods, believes the Ortiz measure is a longshot at this time. Though there is little money now to combat the problem of sick children at schools, Chan said lawmakers can begin to chip away at it this year as part of a five-year plan. The Legislature’s burgeoning Women’s Caucus has made children’s health a top priority this session.

“I am trying to enforce the importance of an issue,” Chan said. “Obviously in the long run, these things are going to cost.”