Bay City schools contracting with McLaren for 13 nurses amid ‘high medical need’ in district

School nurses

The Bay City Public Schools board of education voted on Monday, May 9 to continue a contract with McLaren to provide 13 school nurses to the district. File photo.Jacob Hamilton | The Ann Arbor News

BAY CITY, MI - The Bay City Public Schools board of education voted on Monday, May 9 to continue a contract with McLaren to provide 13 school nurses to the district. However, trustee Thomas Baird raised concerns about this contract since the board had just previously shot down a proposal to privatize the district’s transportation services in the same meeting.

“Well I’m not the smartest guy in the world but we sat here tonight, we listened last week to four proposals to potentially replace 28, 29 bus drivers,” Baird said. “We as a board felt unanimously that it was important to keep the bus drivers school district employees.”

“Yet we’re struggling right now to hire 13 nurses for a specified period of time to be district employees,” Baird added. “If we don’t do it - in the same meeting, we’re going to turn down contracts for employees yet approve a contract for somebody else. For me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Baird made a motion to hire the nurses as employees of the school district, as opposed to having the district contract their services through McLaren.

However, the board did not share Baird’s sentiments. Baird’s motion failed with a 1-4 vote, with trustee Matt Felan abstaining from the vote due to a conflict of interest.

“It’s not even apples to oranges, it’s like apples and trains,” said trustee Joslyn Jamrog. “It’s not even the same thing. Nurses have always been - not always for the last five years have been McLaren Bay employees and grant-funded. Bus drivers are not grant-funded.”

“You’re fighting a fight that doesn’t need to be fought,” Jamrog added.

The funding for the nurses is stemming from state and federal aid related to the COVID-19 pandemic to address needs within the district.

“So right now we’ve got a high medical need and so we’re addressing that need based on the funding that’s come down from the state and the federal government,” said Carla Derocher, the district’s student services/safety director.

District officials expressed concerns about how they would continue funding in-house employees when that grant money ran out and the high costs associated with higher nurses as district employees as opposed to contracting their services out.

Superintendent Stephen Bigelow added that it is currently difficult for districts to employee districts and that the district could not offer the type of job security that McLaren could.

“The issue is - it’s very, very difficult for school districts to hire nurses – very difficult,” he said. And the advantage for us utilizing McLaren, those nurses are already a part of that system.”

According Derocher, McLaren takes care of things such as training, licensing and malpractice insurance for the nurses.

“Currently with the pandemic, the need has been extremely high from the mental health side, also the physical side with COVID,” said Derocher. “COVID is coming back, we’re seeing lots of communication about that, they’re helping our teachers, they’re reviewing our board policies to make sure that we’re doing things legally with medications and stuff like that. They are the licensed professionals that we borrow their service for based on a year-to-year-contract.”

In the end, a motion to continue the contract with McLaren for 13 nurses was approved 5-0, with trustee Felan abstaining and Baird casting a yes vote in contrast with his previous motion.

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