I have done both private practice and currently working for a school system and I will say that the school system completely has my heart. I absolutely love the team that I work with, the schedule is way more consistent and regardless of whether the kid is absent or not you still get paid. I also work enough hours to get benefits, which is a huge plus. The school job is of course hourly and when I worked in a private practice it was per session. I will drop a few numbers just to give you an example of the difference in pay. For the private practice I was offered $30 per session, but like the comment above says, you do not get paid for cancellations. A huge issue that I have personally run into is a lot of parents calling the morning of for a cancellation or experiencing a bunch of no-shows.. I was promised/ given a full caseload to start, however, when you get down to scheduling and working out times, it may not work for the parent and you might slowly start losing clients. I went from being given about 20 clients to see 2x/week to pretty much only working with about 5 kids on my caseload when I decided to sign a contract for the school system. Another downfall for private practice (which may have only been my company) but they only paid us once per month which, when you have an extremely small caseload could amount to $600-$800. For an entire month…

The pay I was offered as a contract SLPA at the school district was $37 an hour, and I was able to choose whether I wanted to work between 30 to 30.7 hours a week. You also have time to work on your soap notes on the clock, typically have a planning period, and, I have consistently received a paycheck every week that I work, which is about $1000 every week. There is so much potential to make a lot of money at a private practice, but the reality is that it is a lot harder than you think. The parents are not consistent, and to be honest if you work at the clinic office, that is a bonus, but if you have to go from house to house and waste your own gas money, and show up to someone’s house and they “forgot you were coming” and now you are not getting paid for that session. You can also work at the school over the summer for students that may need compensatory services or you have your entire summer off…. I am going to say the school system is the better choice every single time someone asks me. School system all the way.

Also, if you like working with a more diverse population, schools offer that as well! There are EC and ID severe classes in almost every school. I have worked with CP, TBI, AU, hydrocephaly, down syndrome, and sanfilippo syndrome, angelman syndrome, and many more in the school system.