David Gonzales doesn’t worry anymore that his teachers won’t know what to do when he has a severe asthma attack.
He missed nearly 60 days at his former Commerce City school, mostly because he was sent home after attacks and seizures linked to asthma and a urological disorder, his mother, Gylinda Gonzales, said.
Since entering Kunsberg School two years ago, the rambunctious 12-year-old has hardly missed a day at the facility, run by National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.
“It helps that they always know what to do to help me,” David said.
Now for the first time, something other than his medical conditions may force the boy with a dream to be an Olympic swimmer to stay home.
David and about 49 low-income Kunsberg pupils – along with 15 other poor children schooled at day-treatment programs in Denver medical facilities – now face losing their Medicaid-paid rides to class.
The reason: a rigorous interpretation of rules that says the reimbursed trips are limited to medical services.
Since the kids are primarily getting an education and not medical treatment, the $12 rides aren’t covered by Medicaid, according to officials at LogistiCare Solutions in Atlanta.
LogistiCare has a contract with the state to provide nonemergency medical transport in the eight-county Denver metro area, including Larimer County.
And because the parents took their children out of public schools – 37 of them are from Denver Public Schools – and sent them to Kunsberg School, which, though private, is tuition- free, they don’t qualify for public- education transport.
Medicaid-funded transportation has been a mainstay at the 85-pupil school for a decade, Kunsberg officials said.
Families such as the Gonzaleses say they may be forced to quit working in order to ensure their children make it to school each day.
“He’s been through seven schools, and no one was able to take care of his needs until now,” said Gylinda Gonzales, a 35-year-old mother of four.
“How is Kunsberg a ‘school of choice’ when I have no choice as a parent other than to put him there because of his health?”
David sees it more simply.
“I’d be sad, and my Mom would lose her job and not get paid,” he said. “I don’t want to lose our house.”
The school is unique because its students are part of the hospital’s nationally recognized pulmonary research program and have immediate access to medical care.
For DPS to pick up the bus tab, the children must undergo an assessment that determines they can only be served outside the DPS system.
“We welcome these parents back to DPS so that we can work with them on their child’s individual needs and find a way to serve them,” spokeswoman Alejandra Garza said.
LogistiCare has also stopped bus rides for 13 children attending day- treatment programs at the Mental Health Corp. of Denver, its spokeswoman, Marijo Rymer, said.
The facility will cover the $1,800 weekly expense, she said.
“If the children didn’t need our services, they would surely be in public school,” Rymer said.
David and his classmates aren’t cut off just yet. LogistiCare said it will continue the rides until Colorado officials hear from Medicaid.
LogistiCare’s $5.3 million contract with Colorado’s Department of Health Care Policy and Finance covers about 290,000 rides a year in eight metro-area counties, company spokesman Edward Domansky said.
“It’s not clear whether the responsibility for transportation is the Department of Education or our agency,” policy and finance department spokeswoman Ginny Brown said. “We’ve asked Medicaid for advice.”
Still, parents are anxious about their children’s future.
“His asthma is pretty tough,” Allison Newell said of her son, Jarrae, 10, a Kunsberg pupil for four years.
“It was severe enough that I missed lots of work. Now I don’t, but if they take this away, I might have to take off work,” she said.
About 50 children are driven to Kunsberg by a LogistiCare contractor, Kids Wheels in Lakewood.
“It’s the children who are being punished here,” owner Beverly Braton said. “They can’t go to a regular school, and they’re stuck between one bureaucracy and another.”
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
