Pennsylvania legislators investigated the unauthorized use of federal tax and private dollars to open school clinics doing gynecological exams without parents' permission. The school health backlash is also triggering scrutiny of the increasing use of federal grants to shape school curricula and services by bureaucratic fiat. For seveal years, ODE, ODH and other groups, using federal and soem state money, have worked to expand health and social services in schools. Most people see only the good that can come when government, schools and communities work together for healthy children. What they don't see at first glance is how federal and state bureaucrats are using schools and community groups to push radical agendas, at public expense.
Nobody denies the value of good health education.
But turning schools into health and social-service centers has a dubious link to better schools, which are struggling to teach reading and math. Such dramatic changes should be debated fully in the open. The comprehensive health locomotive pulls a train of new federal intrusion into local schools and family lives. Ohio should reject the intrusive CDC grants. The Cincinnati Enquirer , a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper.