San Antonio schools hit by $600 million in cuts to school health and related services

SAN ANTONIO It’s a cut that could impact thousands of students across San Antonio, regardless of which school district they attend. More than $600 million will be cut from the School Health and Related Services program.

The funding is largely used to help students with medical disabilities. We reached out to multiple school districts in San Antonio, but only heard from Northside Independent School District, the largest school district in the city.

“The SHARS program is only for students who require medical attention while in our schools,” said Tiffany Contreras, assistant superintendent for budget and finance at Northside ISD.

Contreras said the program reimburses school districts for medical and transportation costs.

“In previous years that was about $20 million for Northside ISD, and last year it was $14 million, so that was a reduction of over $6 million for us,” Contreras said.

Why is this money being cut back? We contacted Texas Health and Human Services to ask. The department told us the decision follows an audit and report released in 2017 and proposed ending funding for the program.

Ultimately, the program was not completely scrapped, but significantly shortened.

The department further says that they have “worked diligently with our federal oversight partners to maintain SHARS funding and reverse the decision to deny funding. It was a federal decision not to maintain SHARS funding, not a state decision.”

The loss of money hasn’t changed any of the programs or resources made available to Northside ISD students, but Contreras says the district is looking for ways to make ends meet.

“We have not made any drastic changes at this time, but there are. Discussions are currently taking place with our Board of Directors to discuss the deficit that we do have,” Contreras said.