The Will County Health Department said Tuesday that it is asking school districts to pay for at least part of the cost of state-mandated hearing and vision tests for students.
The effort is intended to defray a portion of the $262,000-a-year testing cost, which has been underwritten mostly by the county health department since the 1970s when the state began requiring schools to perform the tests.
According to James Zelco, health department director, the annual cost of the tests has been eating into an increasing share of the department’s tax levy in recent years.
“In a growing county like Will, where five or six new schools are being built each year, it is becoming a significant expense,” Zelco said. Zelco added that although the state required the schools to perform the screenings, it never required the health department to carry much of the cost.
The plan was unveiled on Tuesday before the County Board’s Legislative Committee, because the committee mounts lobbying efforts and the health department wants help in getting the state to provide more funding for the tests.
The health department would begin this month asking new schools to cover half the cost. Existing schools would be asked to pick up 50 percent of the cost beginning next year.
The plan has been approved by the Board of Health, and notices were sent to area superintendents earlier this month.
About 60,000 tests costing about $5 each were performed in Will County last year, officials say.
The tests are conducted on preschoolers, kindergartners and 1st, 2nd and 4th graders. The vision test beginning this year is required for 8th graders, who will also get the hearing tests beginning next year.
School officials in Will County sympathized with Zelco and the health department. They said that they know what it’s like to be strapped for money.
“I think their message to us is H-E-L-P in capital letters,” said Gus Tomac, superintendent of Chaney-Monge School District 88 in Crest Hill. “And as a superintendent who has put out that call many times myself, I know how they feel. If a school official can’t understand a budget crunch, then I don’t think anyone could.”
John Balke, assistant superintendent at Plainfield School District 202, agreed.
“They told us that they consider themselves underfunded and we completely understand,” Balke said. “The only thing we can hope for is that things get better at the state level; that the state helps defray some of the costs.”
Currently the Illinois Department of Public Health contributes $37,400 to the annual cost and Medicaid picks up $5,600.
Zelco said the health department’s costs would be even higher if one of the county’s larger school districts, Joliet 86, had not decided several years ago to conduct its own testing.
Mary DeGroot, the health department’s director of family health services, said the increasing costs have been nibbling away at tax-capped financial resources needed to support the department’s other programs.
“The legal responsibility for these screenings really lies with the school districts,” she said. “The health department has just always done it.”
At the same time, Zelco hopes to join with other county health departments in a lobbying campaign to get the state to pick up more of the cost of the tests.
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He said other counties, particularly collar counties that have experienced rapid growth, also are seeing an increasing share of their local tax levies being absorbed by the testing of schoolchildren.
State Sen. Larry Walsh (D-Elwood), who attended a meeting of Will County school superintendents earlier this month, said he backs increased state funding.
“I wholeheartedly agree (the state) should be picking up a larger share of that,” he said. “If we can put something together in a bipartisan manner, I am more than willing to help in trying to get it done.”