The school as the community learning center.
Ferris High School is to be the fourth Spokane high school to get its own CHAS-run health center on campus, the school board decided Wednesday.
Rogers, Shadle Park and North Central high schools already have school-based health centers within their walls that address all sorts of health needs, including physicals, writing referrals and prescriptions, treating and testing some illnesses.
They’re frequently used by students and their families. The Rogers clinic, opened in 2020, logged treating 667 patients in more than 1,900 visits from August 2023 to the same month of 2024.
The other two clinics, opened this summer, each cost around $300,000 to $450,000 to retrofit into existing office space. Around half the funding for those came from the city’s pandemic-era federal American Rescue Plan Act, with the rest from the school district.
The city will also fund around half of Ferris’ future facility, allocating $200,000 from its remaining rescue dollars to the school district to expand its services. The school district will cover the rest of the construction expenses, and CHAS pays to staff the clinic through a memorandum of understanding with the school district. Capital Projects Director Greg Forsyth estimates adding a clinic into Ferris will cost $350,000 to $400,000.
The school board had its choice between the two remaining high schools: Ferris and Lewis and Clark, but also proposed middle schools Flett and Yasuhara, depending on where the biggest health care need is, board members said.
On Wednesday, they’d reached a consensus Ferris had that need. Board member Jenny Slagle was absent from the meeting.
“LC is right in the middle of our medical system,” Board President Nikki Otero Lockwood said, referring to the hospitals and clinics that surround the downtown high school.
They decided against a middle school in part because of results from the state’s annual healthy youth survey that show a higher proportion of students may need care addressing their dental, mental and sexual health in high school.
In a presentation to the board meant to inform their pick, Executive Director of School Support Services Becky Doughty told the school board Ferris’ nurse office is around 20% more used than Lewis and Clark’s.
Doughty, who leads the district’s nursing staff, also supplied the board with data that indicated Ferris had higher proportions in categories relevant to health care and access to it, including more kids with disabilities, learning English, experiencing homelessness, enrolled in special education and classified as low income.
The Southgate school also had around 5% more “chronically absent” students, those kids who miss 18 or more days of school for any reason, including excused absences for doctors appointments.
With the addition of a CHAS clinic a couple of doors down from their classroom, kids don’t have to miss a school day to get health care. The addition of these clinics is one tool in the district’s belt to help improve attendance at target schools, a metric that has tanked statewide post-pandemic.
“It seems like all else being equal, that Ferris has a more significant need than LC, and additionally is farther away from health care services,” board member Mike Wiser said.
“With that direction, we’ll be moving forward with planning and layouts for Ferris, and we’ll work with the Ferris community to find the best location,” Forsyth said.
“Then we’ll partner with our CHAS clinic to make sure we’re getting the opportunities and items that they need.”
The district expects to start retrofitting the new clinic into Ferris this summer.
Like other school based health clinics, it’ll be open year round, except on federal holidays, on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Elena Perry’s work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license.
