Cincinnati Public Schools to hire its own nurses after cutting contract with city health department

CINCINNATI — School nurses at Cincinnati Public Schools will now be hired by the district itself.

On May 19, the school voted to approve a proposal from Superintendent Shauna Murphy to transition nurse hiring to in-house, ending the contract between CPS and the City of Cincinnati's Health Department.

“They would strictly be CPS employees, which the total amount is more like $2.4 million, that we would be saving because we already reduced a million in the budget," Murphy said to the school board.

CPS ending the nursing contract was part of a group of cuts approved by the school board to balance out the district's budget.

I reached out to Cincinnati Public Schools, and a district spokesperson told me that the total contracted staff included 37 positions. That team was broken down into 30 building nurses, five team leaders and two supervisors.

Learn more about the CPS decision in the video below:

Public school cancels nursing contract, aims to switch to hiring nurses in-house instead

The district explained the decision to WCPO 9 with a statement on May 23:

The Cincinnati Health Department gave us a statement in response to CPS's decision, say it was "caught by surprise." The health department also said that no decisions have been made regarding personnel yet.

Read the full statement below:

During the May 27 Budget and Finance Meeting at City Hall, Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Kearney asked the city's budget director if money had already been allocated by the city before CPS cut the contract.

"The budget was essentially put together with the assumption that that contract would be continuing, for the, for the school year. So now, if that’s changing, that may require some changes to our allocations to the health department," said Budget Director Andrew Dudas.

Later in the meeting, Councilmember Scotty Johnson shared his concern for the dozens of nurses impacted by the change.

"The curve that hit this city, as a result of possibly 35 nurses losing their jobs, it just can’t be," Johnson said.

I spoke with Johnson, who told me his top priority at this moment is to make sure the city is doing whatever it can to keep these nurses from being laid off.

"We're turning over every rock to make sure that doesn't happen, they have my word on that," Johnson said.

Johnson told me he's already begun conversations with other city leaders, like the vice mayor, to help these nurses.

A CPS spokesperson told me that job listings haven't been posted yet for CPS nursing positions, but they will be added in the future.