After being approached by several clinics about providing medical needs for students and employees, members of the Lamar County School District Board of Directors issued a Request for Proposals at the Jan. 11 board meeting for on-site medical and clinical services.
School district superintendent Steven Hampton said although the district does have nurses on campus, on-site offerings are sorely needed, as Lamar County is one of the only school districts in the area that does not provide those services. If all goes according to plan, the services would be offered at least one day per week.
“It goes to attendance, mainly – if we can provide services where children don’t have to check out and go to a hospital or doctors for a sore throat or this that and the other, it allows us to keep them in school,” Hampton said. “Also … when the teachers have to be out due to being sick or normal illnesses to go to doctor’s appointments, they’re out as well, and students aren’t learning as (much).
“We have a certain population of our students whose parents can’t take off work to take them to clinics to get their eyes checked or things like that. So we have a need, and we’re trying to meet that need to be able to provide, so that we can better educate and keep our kids in school as much as possible.”
On-site services would go a little above and beyond what the current school nurses are able to provide, such as the ability to prescribe medication.
“They basically are there to refer and go to another doctor,” Hampton said. (It would be) refilling prescriptions … and diagnoses, because (our nurses) can’t diagnose and prescribe medication.
“It’s nothing major; it’s just light medical services for our students and staff. At this point, we don’t have any dedicated buildings or anything like that – that’s something whoever gets the proposal would have to work out.”
Now that the Request for Proposals has been submitted, officials will now accept bids for the services. At that point, each proposal will be scored on an individual basis.
“We’ll send that out and make it a public process; we’ll accept bids for proposals,” Hampton said. “Once we receive those proposals, we have a rubric that we’ll score for each proposal.
“We’ll submit the winner to the board for their approval.”
In other action at the Jan. 11 meeting, board members voted to:
- Accept a $7,000 cash donation from the Lamar County Board of Supervisors, to be used for a café project at Sumrall High School.
- Accept a $125,000 cash donation from Richard Scruggs to the Lamar County Early Learning Collaborative, to be used for Pre-K operating expenses.
- Accept a $10,000 cash donation from Lawrence and Marcia Line to the Lamar County Early Learning Collaborative, to be used for Pre-K operating expenses.
- Accept a $60,000 cash donation from Diamond Grove Center to the Lamar County Early Learning Collaborative, to be used for Pre-K operating expenses.
- Approve salary scale changes.
- Set the next regular board meeting for 6 p.m. Feb. 14 at the Lamar County School District Boardroom at 424 Martin Luther King Drive in Purvis.
