School RN through agency or district?

[kodash]

I have been a psych nurse for the 5 years and was interested in transitioning to school nursing. From what I have been seeing online is that there is a lot of agencies posting nurse jobs. For those of you that are school nurses, did you apply through an agency or the district? What would be the biggest difference in either in terms of benefits/pay?

[marsbar37, BSN, RN]

I found my school nursing assignment through an agency. The pay is very good but no benefits unless you pull in a certain number of hours consistently over a time period. You can get overtime which is great. I've been with my agency for two years now at the same school which I love.

I work at different schools over the Summer when they have school programs so I can still earn. 

I also came from a Psych background before leaving and it really benefited me in my school assignment of working with children with various degrees of autism.

 

[NutmeggeRN, BSN]

Locally, we are all hired by the district.

[kodash]

5 hours ago, marsbar37 said:

I found my school nursing assignment through an agency. The pay is very good but no benefits unless you pull in a certain number of hours consistently over a time period. You can get overtime which is great. I've been with my agency for two years now at the same school which I love.

I work at different schools over the Summer when they have school programs so I can still earn. 

I also came from a Psych background before leaving and it really benefited me in my school assignment of working with children with various degrees of autism.

 

Being with an agency, are you also able to get paid throughout the Summer? Also if you wanted to later get hired directly through the district instead of the agency would they allow that? And would the pay be the same? Sorry for all the questions but thank you for answering!!

[marsbar37, BSN, RN]

In my city we have Summer school programs in various schools throughout the area and my agency finds me one school for the whole Summer or I can be at various schools just filling in. The pay is the same and I can do overtime but so much money gets taken out in taxes. In regards as can you get hired by a district I'm sure you could but the pay is very low for school nurses in my area that im content to just be an agency nurse.

[salpn]

We (the school district) hire directly.   We looked into using an agency to supply temporary help for things like COVID screening and absences, but the local agencies didn't seem too interested in staffing us, so our administrators gave up.

 

[k1p1ssk, BSN, RN]

In my area, schools typically only use agencies to staff 1:1 nurses and for temp & per-diem positions. All of the full and part time school nurses are generally hired by the district and the FTs make a salary rather than an hourly rate. Most offer for pay to go through the Summer if you want!