Georgetown ISD has asked that a recent proposal from Lone Star Circle of Care to provide school campuses with nurse practitioners and licensed clinical social workers be scaled back.

"We probably jumped in with both feet when we should have been sticking one foot in, and we are scaling that back to try and pilot that program," GISD Superintendent Joe Dan Lee said. "We haven't made a firm decision on how that's going to be structured."

The proposal was brought to the district in April by LSCC, a nonprofit community health provider, Lee said.

The proposal was scaled down and eventually discarded for a more collaborative proposal from LSCC that would keep the school nurses while adding nurse practitioners' care.

Lee said the district could look at a pilot program with about four nurse practitioners to offer expanded care.

"That gives us an opportunity to see if this is an effective program that is actually the benefit that we think it's going to be to our students and our families, and we will give Lone Star an opportunity to see if this is something that is sustainable for them," Lee said. "If the program works, we could expand."

At the board of trustees May 21 meeting, Lee said the proposal must expand medical services to students and make financial sense for the district in order to be considered.

The school district currently employs 15 registered nurses and one Licensed Vocational Nurse who are overseen by a registered nurse, GISD spokesman Brad Domitrovich said.

Chief Medical Officer for LSCC Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee and the nonprofit's Management Services CEO Brian Blaylock presented information about the nonprofit and its proposal at the May 21 meeting.

Duperval-Brownlee said the nonprofit approached the district with its proposal to enhance school health care and save the district money.

"It's a way that we felt like we could expand services that we offer our students and actually reduce cost to the district, and I think you'll see a lot of districts try to partner with businesses to provide services that are outside the classrooms—we currently partner with Sodexo, which is our food service provider," Lee said.

Domitrovich said before any changes to the school's health care system are made, the school district must host a public forum.

Visit www.georgetownisd.org for more information.