what's the pay cut?

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Hi. Always hear about having to take a paycut if one goes from hospital nursing to school nursing.

I get about 54k/year as a nurse with 1.2 years experience at the military hospital in metro area in washington.

how much pay cut are we talking here?

i have a friend who is a school teacher and he makes only about $13-15 an hour. Is the pay cut that bad???

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Specializes in School Nursing.

It all depends on where you live. Some states will place you on teacher scale and some will not. Either way, you will not make what you would make in the hospital setting. School nurse pay is not that great. You will get lot's of time off, and the hours are wonderful if you have kids. Good luck in whatever you chose.

Praiser

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

Another thing to look at is the benefit package. My sister was a public school teacher and always made less cash per hour than I did. However, her benefit package was always MUCH, MUCH better. In fact, she was able to semi-retire at age 52 with a very generous pension guaranteed (by the tax payers) for the rest of her life. She also got her graduate education totally paid for -- and only just recently started to have $10 per paycheck taken out to pay a portion of her health insurance. Before that, it was always 100% paid for.

So ... don't forget to estimate the value of the benefit package as you are weighing any offers.

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Depends on the state- what is offered from state to state varies a great deal.

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Depends not only on the State but also the school District within the state. I work in Dallas and one District started me off at $34,000/year and another district 10 miles down the road started me off this year at $43,000/year. I was making $50,000/year working 3 nights a week in the hospital. BUT, "everybody say BUT", I was working Saturday nights, Sunday nights, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve.... not to mention being short-staffed most of the time (99.9% of the time), working with scary Agency people, everybody refusing to take the next admit, floor cellphone ringing for bathroom help as I'm trying to restart an IV, somebody expiring as we're having a code and ER is bring up the combative MVA patient, as the restrained patient with a sitter comes out of the vail bed, as a nurse tells the charge nurse (me) that she gave the wrong medication to a healthy VIP patient (friends to the Administrator) in the suite, (I have a long list but I'll stop there). I LOVE the SUMMERS OFF,1 week THANKSGIVING break, 2 week CHRISTMAS break, 1 week SPRING break, (I fly home to be with family, which is rare). I leave after 8 hours instead of long overtime hours (1-3 hrs). I used to go home hungry/sleepy with mounds of stress on my mind (did I chart everything?, did I chart on new admit?, did I???....). I used to be the Charge Nurse on a Trauma Floor, but it felt like I was in Charge of Stress and Drama Galore. I would go to the bathroom when I felt like quitting. I would tell myself, "don't cry, you will eventually get to go home and retire one day". Whew! The memories are Scary like Halloween. Leave them in the past, thank you.

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Glolilly: HI! Thank you so much for this post. It was like you were reading my mind. It's exactly the kind of thing I have to go through everyday at the hospital: stress, stress, stress. Though I am not a charge nurse, in fact am a newbie nurse at 28 years of age, things at the hospital are just exactly how you said it. Except at the VA with so many retired veterans, we get more combative, total care pt who have no idea who they are anymore or where they are or how to do things on their own. They would be such a handful that no nursing home facilities would be willing to take them, no family to take them in so they end up staying on our unit while the social worker tries to find a place for them until it's too late....they just expire before all that happens. It's so sad. Like I said in another post, I want my care to be more preventive and I loved my school nursing rotation when I was in nursing school so I absolutely think school nursing is for me. But whoa golly! 34k a year? I would be okay with 43k/year.

But you are right, I also need to think about all the holidays I get off that I could work per diem somewhere else to make up for some of the pay I would be losing.

I have a question though. Did you start with 50k/year at a hospital with no experience whatsoever? I know my charge nurse here in seattle make a lot more than that. I would think Dallas is comparable to Seattle as far as standard living, or are they?

Thank you so much for your post!

Depends not only on the State but also the school District within the state. I work in Dallas and one District started me off at $34,000/year and another district 10 miles down the road started me off this year at $43,000/year. I was making $50,000/year working 3 nights a week in the hospital. BUT, "everybody say BUT", I was working Saturday nights, Sunday nights, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve.... not to mention being short-staffed most of the time (99.9% of the time), working with scary Agency people, everybody refusing to take the next admit, floor cellphone ringing for bathroom help as I'm trying to restart an IV, somebody expiring as we're having a code and ER is bring up the combative MVA patient, as the restrained patient with a sitter comes out of the vail bed, as a nurse tells the charge nurse (me) that she gave the wrong medication to a healthy VIP patient (friends to the Administrator) in the suite, (I have a long list but I'll stop there). I LOVE the SUMMERS OFF,1 week THANKSGIVING break, 2 week CHRISTMAS break, 1 week SPRING break, (I fly home to be with family, which is rare). I leave after 8 hours instead of long overtime hours (1-3 hrs). I used to go home hungry/sleepy with mounds of stress on my mind (did I chart everything?, did I chart on new admit?, did I???....). I used to be the Charge Nurse on a Trauma Floor, but it felt like I was in Charge of Stress and Drama Galore. I would go to the bathroom when I felt like quitting. I would tell myself, "don't cry, you will eventually get to go home and retire one day". Whew! The memories are Scary like Halloween. Leave them in the past, thank you.
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When I quit the hospital, I was making $29/hour working part-time (2005). So maybe it was closer to $60,000 Fulltime, but $38,000 part-time( I survived on occas. extra signup days). (I've been a RN for about 20 years-underpaid in my book. It never seemed worth what I had to endure. Should have been $150,000/year, SMILE:) They had just started giving the Charge Nurse $1 an hour more only on the day she was charge. We rotated. I had by then, switched to part-time because full time was too stressful. Also as Charge Nurse on Evenings and Nights, you had a full load of patients. Full load was 6-7 on evenings and 8-10 on nights. Things may be slightly better, I hope, since many started resigning after I left.:uhoh3:

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