From the Times Union: Duval’s School Board will decide whether to
hire a firm to help it recruit physical and occupational therapists, speech
language pathologists and school nurses to work in Duval schools.
Issue: Professional
Placement Resources, based in Jacksonville Beach, provides contract workers and
recruits personnel for school districts, charter schools and rehabilitation
facilities around the country.
The district currently
contracts with 87 of its 160 speech language pathologists, most of its 40
nurses and two of its 40 occupational and physical therapists.
It’s more expensive to
employ them by contract than to hire them outright. Contract costs have risen
from $5.5 million three years ago to a projected $7.7 million this school year.
In each of the past
three years the percentage of contract workers grew, and the percentage of
district employees fell.
“Our goal is to reduce
our reliance on contracted services … and hire our own personnel at reduced
cost, build internal capacity and sustainability,” district officials wrote.
The contract to
recruit for the district extends to September 30, 2017, with three potential
one-year renewals.
Cost: Maximum of
$259,000 a year, including a $5,500 implementation fee, a $4,000 monthly fee
and a $9,000 fee per person hired the first year and $5,000 the second year.
So much for privatization saving money right. Sheesh and what’s
even worse is I would bet dollars to doughnuts these contracted employees get
paid less and have worse benefits than their district colleagues.
Um, here is an idea, end our current contract and hire the people we
already have in place. Now sure there is probably a no compete clause or something
ridiculous like that but strangely I have a feeling that if we ended the
contract then suddenly a lot of school nurses and speech paths will
suddenly be on the market.
Also if you do the math we could still be spending millions
recruiting. Why can’t the district hire four or five people at 65 k a year and
have them do the hiring and recruiting? We could save over a million dollars a
year. Are we being lazy, incompetent or are we rewarding a friend of the school board with a huge contract.
It's important to distinguish between FL-DOH nurses and DCPS nurses. The DCPS nurses are only in certain schools that have an ESE component requiring it (CSS, PI, or diabetics) THE REST of the schools are covered by a meager DOH staff, eacn nurse is responsible for 7-9 schools. We are NOT employed by DCPS, but our contract is not as a contractor, but as a partnership between DOH and DCPS...I promise you there's no head hunter fees involved. We only make $20 an hour.
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