Health Department Budget

Hopkins County school clinics may be the latest casualty in a series of budget cuts to the County Health Department. 

The Department is working to offset $300,000 in funding cuts over the past couple of years with an additional $150,000 expected this year. These cuts could result in the closure of fourteen school clinics employing twenty-eight people. Health Department Nursing Director Denise Beach says closures could burden parents.

“Seizures and things like that in the schools that have to be managed, I guess parents would have to come get their children more often if there was not a school nurse in there.”

The School Health Program has been operating for more than twenty years. The department will present their budget in mid-July. Schools will be told if the program will continue.