Only 8% of School Nurses Plan to Stay Until Retirement, New Report Warns

The school nursing workforce is showing serious signs of strain, according to a new report from Soliant Health the vast majority of school nurses do not expect to stay in the field for the long haul. The findings paint a picture of a profession wrestling with burnout, unstable jobs, and pay concerns that could leave millions of students with less in-school medical care.

Soliant Health, a healthcare staffing provider, surveyed 1,000 school employees across the United States about the challenges shaping their work. Paired with preliminary findings from the National Association of School Nurses (NASN), the numbers are raising alarms about whether schools can keep enough nurses on staff to safely care for students.

For nurses watching the profession, the report is a window into a corner of nursing where job security can vanish from one school year to the next. Here is what the data shows and why it matters well beyond the school hallway.

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The headline figure is striking: only 8% of school nurses plan to stay in education until they retire, according to Soliant Health. A full 71% expect to keep working in schools for six years or less.

NASN’s own preliminary survey points in a similar direction. According to K-12Dive, the association found that 66% of school nurses plan to stay in schools for three to five years, and among those who said they planned to leave, 65% cited retirement as the reason. Taken together, the surveys suggest a workforce that is not putting down long-term roots, which makes consistent, year-over-year coverage for students harder to guarantee.

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School nurses in the Soliant report pointed to current staffing shortages as the biggest factor behind their burnout. Other contributors included student behavioral problems, high caseloads, safety concerns, administrative demands, and compensation concerns.

On top of the day-to-day workload, school nurses often face a level of job insecurity that is unusual in nursing. Most states lack legal mandates for required school nurse staffing levels, which leaves these positions vulnerable to layoffs, especially amid district budget cuts and declining enrollment.

Lynn Nelson, board president of NASN, described how that instability wears on nurses. “Nowhere else as a nurse do you take a job not knowing from year to year if you’re going to have it the next year, and that’s really difficult for people,” Nelson said. She noted that budget cuts and increased scrutiny from parents have added a new layer to a workforce that has long been unstable.

This is not the first warning sign for the profession. Earlier reporting on a national study published in The Journal of School Nursing found that among school nurses who answered a burnout question, up to 80% met the criteria for burnout in the years after the pandemic peak.

School nursing is often viewed as a more stable, lower-stress alternative to bedside work, but this report complicates that picture. The findings show a specialty where compensation, caseloads, and basic job security are real and pressing concerns, and where the absence of staffing laws in most states leaves nurses exposed when budgets tighten.

For nurses considering a move into school health, or for those already in it, the message is clear: the working conditions and protections vary widely by state and district, and policy gaps directly shape whether these jobs are sustainable. The stakes reach beyond nurses themselves. As Lesley Slaughter, senior vice president at Soliant, put it, “These findings show that school nurse shortages are not just a staffing issue. They are a student support issue.” When a school loses its nurse, students with chronic conditions, mental health needs, and daily medication requirements can be the ones left without care.

🤔 School nurses: do you know whether your position is guaranteed from one school year to the next? Tell us in the comments below.

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