District aims for all students to have health insurance

District aims for all students to have health insurance
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

While the national health care debate is raging, the Long Branch School District is taking steps to ensure that all students have health insurance coverage.

With efforts already under way, the district received a $25,000 grant in June for personnel to help with the effort to arrange health care benefits for uninsured students.

Kathleen Celli, head nurse for the school district, said in an interview last week that the goal is to make sure that all Long Branch students have a medical "home."

"We started last year without the grant because we felt that our children needed a medical home whether they had insurance or not," she said. "We had on-site registration, there was communication with the families, and actually it was pretty successful even on our own doing it.

"We applied in April [for the grant] and then got told in June," she added.

The grant money is being used for a bilingual facilitator, which Celli said is working very well.

"We are very happy, very fortunate," Celli said. "The facilitator has really been doing an excellent job with follow-ups and checking with the schools."

Celli said one problem that the district is facing is that a large number of the uninsured do not have Social Security numbers, which makes them ineligible to receive health insurance.

"There are 717 children out of the 5,200 that do not have health insurance," she said. "However, we have 450 of those students that do not have Social Security numbers.

"What we did is, we pulled those names out and there are about 325 students left that we are assisting or going to be assisting with getting New Jersey FamilyCare," she added.

New Jersey FamilyCare is a federal- and state-funded health insurance program created to help the state's uninsured children and certain low-income parents and guardians have affordable health coverage.

Celli said the district was even able to find a solution for the students without Social Security numbers.

"So we have shared their names with the local Monmouth Family Health Center, because they can service those students," Celli said. "We want the children, regardless of their status, to have some place to go in addition to what we do for them."

The district is responsible for sending monthly reports for the duration of the program to the Division of Medical Assistance, which Celli said was done earlier this month.

"Right now the first set of names went to the Division of Medical Assistance," Celli said. "Now they are going to review their names in their databank.

"The other students, we need them to have a medical home," she added. "Every month we have to give a report to the state."

Long Branch School District Superintendent Joseph Ferraina said in an email that the facilitator works 30 hours a week.

Some of the other duties the facilitator handles are: parent conferences, organizing workshop meetings, attending plays, recitals and sporting events, open houses for immunizations, administrating vaccinations at various schools, and visiting local houses of worship.

Ferraina said the program has been a success in the early stages.

"We interviewed every student in the school district to get the status of their health insurance," he said. "Information on the families has already been forwarded to Trenton for their review. We now have a starting place and baseline."

The grant program will end in June 2010.

Contact Kenny Walter at

kwalter@gmnews.com.