HERRIN, IL (WSIL) � The Herrin school district is moving forward with a plan to build a wellness clinic for students, staff, alumni, and their families.
"I hope our staff and our students and our parents and our community sees that here at Herrin Unit 4 we're all about their kids,� said Herrin superintendent Nathaniel Wilson.
Realizing the need to give students and staff a place to get reliable health care close by, the Herrin School district is embarking on opening its own Herrin Tigers Wellness Center.
"The big idea behind it all is to be able to keep our students in school to be able to provide a great resource to our staff and students right here on campus,� said Wilson.
Herrin superintendent Nathaniel Wilson says the Herrin Tigers Wellness Center will model after what school districts like Marion and Carbondale are already doing.
"That's going to be a good model for what we're trying to do here at Herrin,� Wilson says.
The wellness center will be a 1,500 square-foot addition to the high school with more than $322,000 for the project coming from a grant from the Delta Regional Authority with the district chipping in an additional $60,000 toward the project.
"For me to pull $400,000 out of our budget to build a small facility like this, that's tough to do,� admitted Wilson. “But when we get a grant that takes on the lion's share of this, that gives us a great head start."
The wellness center will be a partnership with Shawnee Health and they’ll be the ones staffing the clinic.
"But it will be our building,� said Wilson. “We're going to have that building right off our right outside the door of our high school building here.�
The Wellness Center will offer basic services, and Wilson says, just like any other walk-in clinic would offer.
Wilson says the idea was born from dealing with the health issues of both students and staff members during the COVID pandemic.
"If we weren't sure back in the days with COVID, we had to send them outside someplace else to get a test,� said Wilson.
And that's time Wilson says, students or staff were out of school not learning, and also the burden it put on parents having to take time off work to take their kids to a clinic.
"Now we're offering this right here on our campus,� said Wilson. “So it saves that time. it keeps people in school, it keeps people at their jobs.
The timeline to open the clinic will be January 2025.
