Smart move
Let the state negotiate – and pay for – teacher health insurance. Probably the most critical and costly matter any school board has to manage is negotiating a teacher contract. Most school boards haven’t managed them very well. Not from a taxpayer perspective. Salaries are out of this world; so are benefits. Consider that teachers are just beginning to contribute to the cost of health insurance premiums, while teachers in one school district, Neshaminy, still don’t contribute a dime. Compare that to the private sector, where workers pay upward of 35 percent of the cost of health insurance – or several thousand dollars a year.
It’s why we like House Bill 1881, which would take the cost of health insurance off school districts’ backs and responsibility for negotiating health benefit plans out of school boards’ hands. Instead, the bill would create a statewide health benefit plan for school employees statewide.
The plan would be developed by a board of 16 people, half of whom would represent teachers’ interests with the other eight seats split between the state school boards association and high-level state government officials.
But the real benefit would come from the board’s buying power. Taxpayer savings in the area of hundreds of millions of dollars are expected, as the board would be able to purchase health insurance at a much reduced rate.
School districts statewide now spend, on average, one-sixth of the property taxes they collect for employee health care costs – or about $1.5 billion a year. Anything we could do to take a bite out of that bulging expense we should do. And taking responsibility for health insurance away from school boards sounds like a good way to insure a more prudent approach to the issue.