Ulterior motives for new principal

Imagine my surprise when I read the Daily Herald article from Aug. 9 about Juan H. Gardner being hired as Round Lake High School’s new principal. Actually I’m not surprised that Gardner was hired, as his credentials show he’s obviously been hired to do more than one job.

Juan Gardner, was formerly principle of John Marshall Metropolitan High School in Chicago, where a new school-based health center is being installed in September of this year. Round Lake School District 116 has also been in the planning stages for a school-based health center; so we only have to connect the dots.

School-based health centers, previously called school-based clinics, are benignly advertised to provide many basic medical services, such as physicals and immunizations for low-income students. However, this is merely a clever guise to hide the fact that the primary reason SBHCs exist is to make reproductive health care such as contraceptives and abortion available to all teenagers, regardless of their religious or cultural beliefs, and of course, without parental knowledge or consent.

Parents will initially be given a universal consent form — however, we know, from Brenda Bannor, who has been charged with implementing the SBHC for R.L. Dist. 116, and stated at a November 2011 meeting, that once the consent form is signed by the parent, he or she would not be notified when their child came to the clinic for mental health or reproductive issues. Of course this is true because confidentiality is federally protected by law, and in Illinois there is no parental notification law anyway.

So it is clear that Principal Gardner comes to Round Lake School Dist. 116 from Chicago’s John Marshall High School not by accident.

Bonnie Quirke, President

Lake County Right to Life