Public schools’ ‘mission creep’ diminishes family’s role while academic quality declines, commentary argues

If schools fail to educate your children, should you trust them to deliver health care as well?

Absolutely not, concludes one mom serving on the board of the Virginia-based School Board Member Alliance nonprofit.

“Schools providing health care services stray so far from the original purpose of public education that it is almost unrecognizable,” writes Meg Scalia Bryce for the Institute for Family Studies (IFS). 

“Schools are no longer expected only to educate children, but to provide the basic care once expected of the family. … Outsourcing our children’s health care to public schools – that is, to the government – ought to be an unwelcome development because it degrades the role of the family in society and represents government overreach.”

Issues with School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs)

Bryce’s commentary focuses on School-Based Health Centers, or SBHCs – numbering about 3,900 nationwide, especially in New York and California.

“Last year, Rockingham County in Virginia launched its first School-Based Health Center (SBHC), establishing health care clinics at a public middle school and high school,” she notes. “The program is meant to increase healthcare access to underserved populations, improve school attendance (a serious and lingering problem since Covid-school closures), and offer relief to busy parents.”

Services at these centers can include physical exams, mental health counseling, vaccinations and reproductive health services.

“Proponents of this model argue that it is family-friendly because it is more convenient for parents,” Bryce writes. “Some go further to suggest that SBHCs benefit not only children and parents, but the entire community.”

However, Bryce lists three reasons why she believes these programs present long-term problems – educational outcomes, replacing parents as “primary caregivers,” and creating “a mission creep that compromises the vital role of the family in society.”

“Public schools’ foray into offering physical, dental, and mental health care comes while we are seeing math, reading, and science scores throughout the country drop to some of the lowest levels ever recorded,” she explains.

“While SBHCs have been shown to improve students’ attendance and access to care, they have not been shown to improve academic outcomes. Therefore, these programs do not deliver on the first goal of public education: improving education.”

For example, the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores show “a bleak picture” of schools’ ability to educate children when fewer than 40% of 12th graders, 8th graders and 4th graders attained proficiency in reading and mathematics, Bryce argues.

“Thankfully, there is one thing we know to be the biggest predictor of academic growth: strong parental involvement.”

‘Unintended consequences’ of health care without parental presence or consent

However, the second issue cited with SBHCs directly affects the role of parents as their children’s primary caregivers.

“In my daughter’s most recent check-up and sports physical, she was given (and I intercepted) three different questionnaires asking whether she had considered killing herself,” Bryce explains as one example.

Such questionnaires have become “standard protocol” in many pediatric well-child visits “despite little evidence that they improve mental health,” she notes.

“Repeatedly asking a child probing questions about suicide is not a careful approach to mental health care and may have unintended consequences. Parents must be aware that if they entrust SBHCs to conduct even the most banal of health services, such as a sports physical, they still risk exposing their children to harmful interventions.”

Furthermore, reproductive health care services provided by SBHCs often do not require parental involvement or consent.

“Parents are right to be alarmed because parents have the right to know if their child is seeking prenatal care or treatment for an STI – not only so that they can manage the child’s medical care, but also so they may protect the child from unhealthy and potentially abusive sexual relationships,” Bryce concludes.

“Schools providing children opportunities to hide their sexual activity from their parents is dangerous; it puts those children at risk and violates a parent’s right to protect them.”

Bryce cites the recent case of a Virginia public school allegedly arranging abortions for minor students without notifying their parents.

“It is not unreasonable to expect similar overreach and threats to parental rights in school divisions where SBHCs are more extensive, and where minors have more autonomy by law.”

Families, not schools, should remain ‘backbone of a community’

Bryce’s last concern with SBHCs involves the assumption that schools, not parents, should consider themselves the primary caregivers and protectors of children.

“We should all be wary of a program that promises to ease parents’ burden by relieving them of their obligations as parents. Yes, most parents are busy. However, we should be the ones seeing to the care of our children.”

Bryce emphasizes the nation’s historical precedent of parental rights and responsibilities in shaping their children’s upbringing, including a 1925 Supreme Court decision.

“Families have traditionally served the role of socializing children, and providing for their care (food, housing, and health). The more we abandon these norms, the more society will suffer.”

Against this backdrop, Bryce takes issue with a recent statement by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) describing such programs as “the center of their communities.”

“The AFT’s boasting that SBHCs become the backbone of a community should be alarming because it is families who should be the backbone of a community,” she concludes. “We should reject a reorganization of society that demotes the family.”

Bryce acknowledges some parents fail to acknowledge or fulfill their responsibilities in caring and providing for their children.

“It is a devastating reality that many children grow up without a solid family support structure,” she writes, but argues “the best way to help those children is to develop the parents’ role in the child’s life.”

“Rendering the parents increasingly unnecessary is bad for the child and bad for all of us. Parents should be on the hook for their children’s overall well-being. When parents are struggling to bear that responsibility, we should help them get back to the point where they can do it themselves; we should not build an entire government system to relieve them of the responsibility.”