Paul Anthony and Mike Rosen

Anthony and Rosen served on the Portland School Board from 2015-2019.

Last month, the Portland Public Schools Board quietly, and with little notice killed plans for a health clinic to be built inside Lincoln High School. This was a surprising reversal because the school board had recently required that all newly modernized and rebuilt high schools have spaces for school-based health-clinics. The idea was to ensure that students could access basic services such as mental health counseling, immunizations, care for illness and injuries, sports and routine physicals and reproductive health services regardless of means, parental consent, citizenship or health insurance coverage.

But in a 6-1 vote, with only board member Julia Brim-Edwards voting “no,” the board opted to go back on what it promised the community. This decision is short-sighted and should be reversed.

Most of Portland’s high schools already have health clinics. However, Lincoln and Wilson do not, and it is not for lack of need. In fact, many of these westside students access the closest health clinic at Benson Polytechnic High School, in significant numbers, based on the feedback we’ve received both from students and OHSU Hospital, which staffs the Benson clinic. Those students take time out of their school day to travel to access care; transportation barriers ensure that fewer students get the critical care they need.

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The board’s decision appears to stem from the inability to find an outside medical provider to fill the role OHSU plays at the wildly successful Benson Tech Wellness Center. Unfortunately, the district didn’t actively pursue a health partner to run its Grant clinic and didn’t even issue a request for proposals for Lincoln. Nor did staff engage in an even better approach – direct negotiations with providers – as is done with hundreds of other contracts.

But the district’s failure to plan for this isn’t a legitimate reason for canceling it altogether. The alternatives that staff and board members pitched are wholly inadequate. A school nurse with restricted ability to provide even basic health services is not a substitute for a school-based health clinic that can support all our students. And, it isn’t enough to just hand a student a list of providers and wish them luck accessing the services they need.

Lincoln High School administration has lined up an outside provider for mental health services, but that isn’t sufficient either. Students must get parental permission for such an arrangement, while a full-service health clinic staffed by the county or OHSU allow for confidentiality.

High school students sometimes need confidential medical care independent of their parents and family doctors. Family pressure can be an enormous barrier to a student being willing to admit to and seek treatment for mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. All students regardless of family income, race, gender, or ethnicity can struggle with these health challenges and need help.This also is true for students needing access to family planning counseling and services.

Access to healthcare is a social justice issue. It is a racial justice issue. It is a gender equity issue. And it is a mental health issue.

Keeping our existing health clinics open and ensuring that each high school without a clinic is rebuilt with dedicated space and partnered with a medical provider should be a priority for the district and its board. This is how we support the whole child. And with the recent adoption of the ground-breaking Student Success Act, this is the direction the entire state is headed. We know there are health providers willing to partner with us; our schools have been hearing from them for years. There is no excuse for allowing this to fall through the cracks.If the school board is to not incur the moral and ethical blame for the consequences of this avoidable omission, they should either direct the Superintendent to handle partnership negotiations personally and hold him accountable for their success, or they should take responsibility for it themselves.

We have done it before; it’s hard and complicated work, but it is certainly possible, and our children deserve no less.