School clinic’s opening to assist with attendance

Helping ill students is goal

The Pulaski County Special School District had an absentee problem during the past school year.

Last September, which was the district’s Attendance Awareness Month, the average daily attendance of students fluctuated between 95 and 96%.

Over the course of the year, attendance “tapered off significantly,” according to district spokesperson Jessica Duff.

Come April, the attendance rate was 89% to 90% for the whole district, with some schools sitting at 98% and others at 88%.

The lowest point any one school reached during the school year was 86%.

Those rates are largely attributed to students claiming to be ill.

“All we usually get is a parent note (saying), ‘Johnny was sick,’” joked Dr. Janice Warren, who has served at the district’s assistant superintendent of equity and pupil services for the past 11 years.

A hopeful solution to the absentee woes problem is coming.

Earlier this week the district announced it will open its first ever school-based clinic in August.

Located in the old annex on the campus of Mills Middle School, the clinic will be a product of a partnership with Mainline Health Systems, an organization that provides comprehensive health and dental care.

“Schools are looking for any kind of avenue to keep kids in school and to keep staff working,” Warren said. “And if health services is one of the (ways we can improve) attendance rate … we wanted to provide that for our staff.”

The clinic, approved by the district’s School Board in a 4-3 vote in February, had its origins in a 2022 survey the district conducted of parents, guardians, staff and fifththrough 12th-grade students.

The survey simply asked if they would use a school-based clinic if one was available.

According to Duff, the survey had four available responses: the responders definitely would use a facility, they probably would, they probably would not, or they definitely would not.

“The numbers were just astounding, the interest that we got back from our families that ‘yes, I would utilize something like this, yes, I need this kind of service for my students,’” Warren said.

Combined, 78% of those who answered said they definitely or probably would use the clinic.

“This is something that we have discussed for a long time,” Warren said. “When Arkansas Department of Education or DC started providing schools with grant money to do school based health clinics, the thing was that you had to be able to sustain it.”

For a while the district was concerned about sustainability after a three- or five-year grant ran out, “so we didn’t jump on it.”

“But we were at a point at this time that we thought, ‘hey, if this is going to help keep our students and staff in school, this is going to benefit us all over,” Warren said. “Because if students feel good, staff feels good, they do better.”

The “basic things” PCSSD was looking for in the clinic’s services were the things “parents would typically pick up the students to run to urgent care or to their primary care physician,” Warren said.

What all will students and faculty find at the clinic?

Mainline will employ a primary care nurse practitioner, a nurse, a patient support specialist and a behavioral health provider.

The medical team will provide immunizations, physicals, treatment of acute and chronic conditions and lab work.

The clinic will address behavioral health through therapy.

Anything like a broken limb will require a trip to a more advanced facility.

And it’s all free and it will serve the whole district.

“We’re working on trying to provide transportation to schools that are not close to where it’s located,” Warren said.

All of this begs the question, are the days of the school nurse numbered?

Warren has a definitive answer.

“No, sir. No way can the school nurse be a thing of the past,” Warren said. “As of a matter of fact, school nurses is one of the areas that supports this, because what happens is the school nurse is actually the one that makes the referral to the health clinic. You either have to go through the school nurse or a parent directly.”

That point is emphasized by Ashley Anthony, the chief operating officer at Mainline.

“We’re not here to replace the school nurse,” Anthony said. “Where we come in is if the parents have consented to utilizing our services, and the student shows up to the nurse’s office with flu-like symptoms. They can contact the parents and make sure they’re OK with them being seen and we can actually run tests and prescribe something if needed for that student.”

According to the Arkansas Department of Health, a school-based health center is required to have a working relationship with the doctors of the child they see. They must also have an advisory board consisting of community representatives, parents, youth, and family organizations, to provide planning and oversight.

A school-based clinic isn’t a new idea in the state.

Mainline currently has clinics in seven Arkansas school districts, including Sheridan and Star City.

PCSSD is the largest district it has worked in so far.

“I will say that if you’re in one school clinic, you’ve been in one school clinic,” said Anthony when asked how the PCSSD’s clinic may be different than others. “They’re are all different. None of them are the same. So yes, this school district is bigger, but the care is very similar.”

While the clinic is in one location, it will use telehealth services to reach the other school campuses.

“As there’s an increased demand, so we can add clinicians and staff appropriately to meet that need,” Anthony said.

For the district, it doesn’t just have “make attendance better” as an ambiguous goal for the clinic.

They have specific numbers they hope to reach.

“We want to increase the school day student attendance by 10%,” Warren said. “Increase school day staff attendance by 10% and increase literacy performance of low income students by 10%.”