AUGUSTA -- Three bills up for legislative hearings this week would expand the scope of schools' public health responsibilities as schools face shrunken budgets.

Education Committee members will hear testimony on bills that would require:

* periodic dental health screenings in schools;

* a middle school-level mental health awareness curriculum; and

* at least two unstructured recess periods daily for elementary school students.

While public-health advocates praise the initiatives, the Maine Department of Education opposes the bill on dental screenings.

"It's not the kind of climate to be putting new requirements on schools," Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said.

Schools are reeling after $27 million was cut from their budgets this academic year; they face grim budgets next school year, as well.

The dental screenings legislation came out of a governor's task force that focused on oral health, said bill sponsor Rep. Nancy Smith, D-Monmouth.

"The purpose of the bill is to make sure, when we're checking the kids to make sure that they're healthy, that we'll include oral health within that," Smith said.

The bill would require that children be screened for dental problems before entering kindergarten.

Once in school, the bill provides for regular, in-school screenings.

Schools already monitor children's sight and hearing.

Smith's bill proposes a new Department of Health and Human Services grant program to fund the screenings.

The cost is not yet known, but Smith said the program "certainly will pay for itself by identifying problems early."

The Department of Education opposes the initiative, since many Maine families might be unable to afford a pre-kindergarten dental screening, Connerty-Marin said.

Rep. Anne Haskell, D-Portland, is sponsoring the other two bills: one that would require elementary school recess time and the other requiring a mental health awareness curriculum in middle schools.

"I'm finding out what's happened is a lot of what we thought of as traditional recess is being supplanted by physical education and by more organized events," Haskell said. "What I've come to realize is we really aren't giving kids an opportunity to be self-sufficient around recess time."

The recess bill, L.D. 136, would require that elementary schools provide two periods of unstructured recess time daily. The length of the required recess is unspecified.

"Others may have other ideas about (the bill)," Haskell said. "We purposely left it kind of broad."

The mental health awareness bill would require that schools teach a mental health awareness curriculum designed by the National Institutes of Health.

"(Students) don't know some of the signs and signals either for themselves or their peers around mental illness," Haskell said. "This helps demystify that."

The Department of Education is not taking a position on either of Haskell's bills.

Connerty-Marin said the department, however, is hesitant to require that schools use a specific curriculum.

"There are health standards that students are supposed to meet," he said. "But we don't dictate the curriculum that's used to get there."

If the bills pass, the list of schools' public health responsibilities would grow.

"I think it's an important role for schools to play," said Becky Smith, executive director of Health Policy Partners of Maine. "It's a place, rather than through doctors' offices or dentists' offices, where you can reach all kids regardless of how much money their families have."

Becky Smith's group, a coalition of public health organizations, will push for a bill later in the legislative session that would require that schools regularly screen children's body mass index in an effort to track childhood obesity.

Ultimately, addressing students' health needs in school promises educational benefits, Nancy Smith said.

"If we're not addressing these basic public health issues, we're not going to be able to educate these kids," she said.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com