Repealing Mandatory Funding for School Health Center Construction
Floor Speech
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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise again in opposition to this bill.
I do so with somewhat of a personal angle on this. My wife, Audrey, is a pediatric nurse practitioner. At one time she worked in a school-based health center. She doesn't today, presently. But I certainly, through her, have gotten a chance to be exposed to the benefit of school-based health centers.
There is no more efficient delivery system. It makes sure that kids get good, high-quality care at school, gets them back on their feet, back in class where they belong, rather than going to emergency rooms and spending hours waiting for care or being sent home many times in an unsupervised situation out of class. Again, the beauty of a school-based health clinic is that it obviously is in a setting where children are located. Again, the turnaround in terms of making sure that they're back doing what's good for them and good for their future is just smart investment.
I would also just give a small example in my district. I represent southeastern Connecticut. We're the proud location of the Groton sub base, the oldest sub base in America, 8,000 sailors, a lot of families with kids who are located at the base. And at Fitch High School in Groton, there's a school-based health center, which is the primary caregiver for many military families' children. Again, these are kids who move around the country. Oftentimes their care is disrupted from one place to the other. Having a school-based center ensures that these kids are going to have access to health care, that they're going to have their checkups to make sure that they can enter school, that they can enter school athletic programs. Again, in many instances for these military families, it is the primary health caregiver.
Two hundred twenty-seven families--I checked this morning with the center in Groton--get their care through the center. This program is going to be used to ensure that Fitch High School's footprint in terms of the school building will be expanded. It will be an investment in information technology.
The Acting CHAIR (Mr. Yoder). The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. PALLONE. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. COURTNEY. They will invest in information technology to, again, make sure that this terrific, efficient, cost-effective, high-quality program is, in fact, going to be there for, again, families who were serving in Libya, in the Mediterranean. Their parents were part of the USS Providence, the Florida, the Scranton, which were part of the initial attack in Libya.
Again, this is a program which works not only for those kids, for the community, but also for our Nation; and I would, again, respectfully rise in opposition to this measure which, again, I think really heads us in the wrong direction in terms of high-quality care for America's kids.
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