Health Centers on School Properties Bill Sparks Committee Debate
Lawmakers on the Assembly Education Committee last Thursday debated Assembly Bill 4381, the counterpart of Senate Bill 3156, which would make it legal for school districts, for a nominal fee, to lease school property to federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). The Education Committee passed the bill 6-3 on party lines, but not before facilitating a robust difference of opinion.
Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-24) objected to the bill. “We see a trend overall – this bill is part of a larger piece, where we go back to that point of ‘in loco parentis’ again,” she said. “… I think universal consent to parents needs to be norm, the rule not the exception. …This bill is just a piece of a bill that is really making people uneasy.”
Maria Quigley of NJ Stand Up emphasized the points cited by Fantasia. “Many parents would not want this anywhere near their school,” said Quigley. “Most parents would think of healthcare as the school nurse, but this is a whole new ballgame. These health centers are already in place, and some are even here in New Jersey. They are intended to replace the family doctor.”
Shawn Hyland of NJ Family Policy Center: “We do oppose this bill. … Expanding the footprint of FQHCs on more school properties is a concern for parents.”
Michael Currie of Wake Up New Jersey said, “In Seattle these school-based healthcare centers have resulted in providing hormonal treatments to students for medical transititon across sex hormones and puberty blockers. Imagine if this happens without knowledge of you, the parent.”
Others testified against the bill because of an alleged lack of adequately assessed safety factors.
On the other side of the argument, Assemblyman Avi Schnall (D-30) backed the bill, and objected to the bill’s opponents framing it as a parental consent issue. “I do not support the erasure of parental rights in children’s medical care,” said the assemblyman.
He said given the seriousness of allegations, he decided to read the bill as though it were the Talmud. He took the bill to other members of his community in Lakewood. The bill, he concluded, facilitates medical access to impoverished families. “This bill does not medicalize or indoctrinate,” the assemblyman said. “We have a chronic problem of children not coming for their annual visits. And there is a significant lack of care. The FQHC is a significant distance away. Parents are working double and triple jobs. We don’t have public transportation in Lakewood. They don’t come to the doctor. If I could have made an FQHC on the school and kids can come, of course with consent of the parent, because it is federally regulated, of course … because impoverished families cannot get their kids to a doctor.” The committee is not changing parental consent, period, said Schnall, who expressed his enthusiastic support for the bill.
His fellow Democrats joined Schnall in passing the bill out of committee.
DAWN FANTASIA, WRONG AS ALWAYS
You would think an educator would be in favor of programs that benefit schoolchildren.
And then said educator–Dawn Fantasia– comes along to smash that perception to bits.
Fantasia, possibly the most ignorant member of the New Jersey Assembly–and that’s saying a lot–has voiced her strong opposition to a bill that would allow school districts to lease space to federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), which deliver high quality health care to all people, regardless of their ability to pay. They serve the uninsured as well as patients with Medicaid, NJ FamilyCare, Medicare and private insurance.
At a time where health care is a major issue, having facilities like these in schools would seem like a good idea. But not to right-wing wackadoodles like Sussex County’s Fantasia.
And why? “We see a trend overall – this bill is part of a larger piece, where we go back to that point of ‘in loco parentis’ again,” she says. That’s a word salad that basically means nothing except the usual Moms for Liberty talking points about “parental rights”.
Fantasia goes on: “I think universal consent to parents needs to be norm, the rule not the exception. …This bill is just a piece of a bill that is really making people uneasy”. What this dilletante seems to unable to understand is that no one is forcing children to use an FQHC; it’s merely an available option for children (and parents) who may need medical assistance.
But let’s go to the REAL objection, as articulated by Michael Currie of “Wake Up New Jersey”, who said, “In Seattle these school-based healthcare centers have resulted in providing hormonal treatments to students for medical transititon across sex hormones and puberty blockers. Imagine if this happens without knowledge of you, the parent”. Oh yeah, there’s that. Or like Felony Donnie and his sidekick Just Dumb Vance, who believes that schools have super-secret operating rooms that perform sex-change operations during the time classes are in session. One can only shake their head at the level of idiocy some people will sink to.
This is the typical behavior of the MAGA conservatives, of which Fantasia is a charter member. Her attitude is “if it’s a good thing, I’ll find a way to be opposed to it”. What do you expect from a woman who sees herself as New Jersey’s version of Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Fortunately, there are members of the Assembly who are somewhat more level-headed and clear-thinking than a totally unqualified hack such as Rose-Colored Glasses Fantasia. Take, for example, Avi Schnall. He’s an Assemblyman from Monmouth and Ocean counties–areas that have a significantly conservative Jewish population. He took a detailed look at the bill (A4381) and concluded “This bill does not medicalize or indoctrinate…We have a chronic problem of children not coming for their annual visits. And there is a significant lack of care. The FQHC is a significant distance away. Parents are working double and triple jobs. We don’t have public transportation in Lakewood. They don’t come to the doctor. If I could have made an FQHC on the school and kids can come, of course with consent of the parent, because it is federally regulated, of course … because impoverished families cannot get their kids to a doctor.” The committee is not changing parental consent, period, said Schnall, who expressed his enthusiastic support for the bill.
Maybe if Fantasia and her fellow obstructionists took their jobs as seriously as Schnall, she’d see that having FQHCs available in schools is a good idea. The Assembly Education Committee agreed, and voted, albeit along party lines, to advance the bill for a vote by the full Assembly, where it is expected to pass.
As usual, Dawn Fantasia is on the wrong side of the right thing to do. Story of her life.
Another Marxist slow play to decimate the nuclear family turning our educational system into covert mental health institutions with no checks or balances thus continuing to strip parental rights as they edge NJ closer to the cliff on the daily. Fortunately for the Democrats in the Trenton majority the NJ electorate is too busy and naive to notice working multiple jobs with their heads in the sand to afford living in Cali East. Imagine if these gravy sucking swine actually did something to cut the pork spending in NJ to alleviate our tax burden instead. When Emperor With No Clothes Murphy stated he wanted NJ to become the next California he got his wish on the flaccid, feckless, faux freedom fighting frauds called the NJGOP, the silent minority’s watch. Kudos to Dawn Fantasia and Erik Peterson for standing for parental rights and common sense in NJ, two people in Trenton who pass on the pork roll and shine light on the Trojan horse darkness.
Tom Seretis, haven’t you had enough with your Christian Nationalist BS getting you in trouble, such as defaming school librarians? Dawn Fantasia is a bigoted right-wing wack job who is auditioning to be New Jersey’s answer to Marjorie Taylor Greene. And like all of her efforts, Fantasia will lose this one too. It’s going to be fun watching you get waxed in court.
Michael Schnackenberg is nothing more than a Left-Wing Democrat-Communist that wants to suck off of the government teat at taxpayers’ expense. He accuses everyone not cooperating with his Left-wing Marxist “group-think” as being “nationalists”. He’s trying to equate “nationalists” with Nazis. However, he is too brain addled and ignorant to understand that Communism and Marxism have caused more death and misery in our history than all other political and government groups combined. Communism totalitarianism has, so far, led to the murders of over 250 MILLION innocent people since the beginning of the 20th Century and the Communist Revolution in 1917.
One wonders why he supports decimating the nuclear family and having government control gender transitioning and sex change for children, when all empirical studies, reports and scholastic studies have shown that children should NEVER be introduced to the transgender or LGBTQ narrative until their brains are fully developed–at age 25.
“Thomas Jefferson”, do you not realize that Communists are not leftists? You have no clue as to who I am and what I stand for, but at least I have the courage to post my opinions under my own name. Until you identify yourself, you are nothing more than a retarded Trumptard troll who probably sponges off his parents.