NYC DOE has 1800+ schools with fewer than 600 full-time salaried nurses. Hundreds of other nurses are paid part-time (DOH). There are two different unions, different benefits, etc. Hundreds of other nurses are temps: outsourced contract nurses from for-profit companies.

Yet dozens of schools have NO nurse coverage at all some days, and thousands of children have mandated daily care across the city. Also, temporary, contract nurses do not develop relationships within their school communities. They also do not have access to the online health records.

The Mayor promised a nurse in every school for the COVID19 reopening. In order to do so, he flew nurses in from around the country, paid them higher rates, put them up in hotels, and paid them a daily meal stipend - amounting to about double the rate that our local nurses get for doing less work. ALSO - these traveling agency nurses are leaving NYC at the end of this school year, and we stand to have approximately 400 vacancies with no formal plans to solve the problem before the 2021-2022 school year.

We demand a permanent, full-time nurse for all NYC schools, and we want to see this line item in the 2022 fiscal budget due June 30, 2021.