Health Care On Campus Part Of Special Program Coming To 2 Palm Beach County Schools

A seemingly small obstacle can have a big impact on a student's education.

"If you come to school hungry, you won't be able to focus if your stomach is upset," said Lauren Fuentes, regional executive director of the Florida Orphanage Association.

"You can't concentrate when you have a toothache, when you have a headache," he continued. “We also have examples in other schools where a child had the wrong shoe size and felt uncomfortable and unhappy all day.”

That's why his agency, along with three others in Palm Beach County - a school district, a health district, and Florida Atlantic University - are signing a 25-year agreement with two local schools.

The teams will provide medical services, community programs and new learning opportunities at John F. Kennedy Middle and Lake Worth High Schools, where the majority of students come from low-income families.

They will do it in the same way as the schools of social associations.

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The model, which began at Orlando High School in 2010, has expanded to over 30 schools across the state, with Palm Beach County included for the first time.

This requires a long-term partnership between the school district, the nonprofit, health care provider, and the college or university.

These partnerships, along with state legislature funding, are overseen by the University of Central Florida. UCF co-sponsored the model with support from Orange County Public Schools and the Florida Orphanage Association.

"If you've seen the CPP school, you've only seen one because it's so different," Fuentes said.

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All community colleges share the same general goals of meeting the medical needs of students, providing additional learning opportunities, and increasing family and community involvement on campus.

But programs and resources vary from school to school, depending on their needs.

These often include free food and clothing that students can take home, as well as basic medical, dental, vision, and counseling services for students with parental permission.

Campus healthcare saves families time and money because healthy students are more vigilant and skip school, Fuentes said.

At the local level, the health district plans to periodically send its mobile clinics to two schools, he said.

“Not all families have access to a medical facility or the ability to go there and pay,” Fuentes continued. “Even if they don’t get paid, sometimes they have to lose a day’s wages to take their kids to these meetings.”

Public schools also offer more learning opportunities, such as tutoring and after-school programs, as well as support for families of students.

These could be parenting classes, financial planning classes, resume writing workshops, English classes, or help for new buyers.

"It's about taking them to school so they become part of the school community, not just sending kids there and not knowing what's going on," Fuentes said.

The UCF Public Schools Center gave two schools $80,000 to launch their programs. The next step, Fuentes said, is gathering community feedback, and that process is expected to begin in early January.

He plans to dedicate the first year to research and planning, and the second year to a single program for each school.

"We don't come to tell the community and the school what they need," Fuentes said. "They tell us what they need."

"The results speak for themselves"

© Alexandria Ayala Keith Oswald, Palm Beach County School, Director of Justice and Welfare; Dennis Sagerholm, District Attorney; Glenda Sheffield, Director of Field Research; Alexandria Ayala, Student Council Member; Melissa McKinlay, District Commissioner; and Mike Burke, director of schools, during the first community partnership school in Orlando.

In May, Superintendent Mike Burke and School Board member Alexandria Ayala, along with other district leaders, visited the original Orlando Community School.

“It definitely motivated us to try to continue this program in Palm Beach County,” Burke said.

Evans High School has a health center with its own health care providers, nurses, consultants and dentists. The center has its own parking and a separate entrance to the school campus.

The campus also has a central hub called "HUB". According to the school's website, it opens early and closes late and offers students "a variety of activities to enhance education, personality and well-being."

In the 11 years since the form was introduced, Evans High School's graduation rate has risen from 64 percent to 99 percent, according to the Orphanage Association.

And at CA Weis Elementary Public School in Pensacola, dropouts dropped from 425 in the 2016-2017 school year to 26 in the 2019-2020 school year.

“This is a proven model,” Ayalacoa said. "The results speak for themselves."

He said then-County Commissioner Melissa McKinley and Florida Atlantic Research Park University president Andrew Deuville asked them to bring uniforms to local schools in early 2021.

After careful planning, Palm Beach County will now join Florida's other major school districts, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, Duval, and Hillsborough, which already have community colleges.

“None of our children will be left without him,” Ayala said. "The community comes together to surround you with everything you need."

Giuseppe Sabella is an education reporter for the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can contact her at gsabella@pbpost.com. Support our journalism and subscribe today.

This article first appeared in The Palm Beach Post: Campus Health Services is part of a special program run by two Palm Beach County schools.

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