Calling for Public Hearings before the City Council Committee on Education to Discuss the Possibility of Using City Health and Social Service Agencies to Compliment School District Nurse and Guidance Counselor Resources in Public Schools.

WHEREAS, There is conceivably a four hundred million dollar shortfall expected in the School District Budget for the 2011-2012 school year; and

WHEREAS, The District may be forced to make painful staffing reductions including cutting nurses and guidance counselors at District middle and high schools; and

WHEREAS, Nearly fifty percent of our youth drop out of school between the 9th and 12th grades; and

WHEREAS, School nurses and guidance counselors can provide important support to students experiencing barriers to learning due to psychological, social, economic or medical issues; and

WHEREAS, During the 2010-2011 school year, school-based case management services were administered to approximately twenty-six hundred students while twenty-two hundred others received one-time consultations; and

WHEREAS, The current ratio of two hundred and fifty students to one counselor in middle schools and three hundred to one in high schools, leaves many students without access to needed counseling and health services; and

WHEREAS, Supplementing the District's school-based social services programs with the City's social services and health department programs could provide more students with access to those services while helping the District to mitigate costs; now therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Philadelphia City Council Calls on the Committee on Education to Hold Public Hearings to Discuss the Possibility of Using City Health and Social Service Agencies to Compliment School District Nurse and Guidance Counselor Resources in Public Schools.

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