The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Chicago School Board Feeds Nursing to Corporations

Mar 14, 2016

Chicago Public Schools is moving to hand more nursing care in schools to a big company–defense contractor RCM Technologies. It looks like they are moving to contract all nursing out, supposedly to “save money.” That is, RCM’s profits come at the expense of children’s health.

Chicago Public School officials have claimed for years that there is a “shortage” of nurses. They’ve used this as an excuse to contract some of the nursing in schools out to private corporations, rather than hire people.

The school system handed RCM a 30 million-dollar contract last June. Six months in, there have already been many problems. The biggest one is that the contract nurses rotate schools, and so do not develop necessary relationships to the children in their care. One diabetic student, who didn’t receive an injection, became scared to attend school. There have been problems with basic services, like epi-pen injections.

Will a child die to pad RCM’s bottom line? It happened in Philadelphia, when they removed all school nurses–again to “save money.” CPS is trying to hand even more of its money to profiteers–and it will hurt children to do it.