A statewide contract for school employee health care will likely be settled in arbitration — again.
Representatives from teachers unions and the Vermont School Boards Association have been bargaining since the spring to no avail. The parties have already gone through mediation and fact-finding, and walked away from nine hours of talks on Wednesday without a deal in hand.
The Vermont-NEA, the state’s largest teachers union, has since fired off a statement, accusing the school boards of signaling they had “no intention” of reaching a negotiated settlement. That means an arbitrator will inevitably have the final say, the union said.
“After we’ve had a year of preparation and lots of negotiation, to be right back at the same place — it’s just disappointing,” said Mike Campbell, chief negotiator for the union and a teacher at BFA-St. Albans.
As with the overall health care market, costs have been rising sharply in recent years for school insurance, and talks about how to split the ever-larger bill have been predictably acrimonious. In 2019, bargaining for Vermont’s first-ever statewide contract was settled by an arbitrator who ultimately sided with workers.
Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a former school board member in South Burlington and the lead negotiator on the employer side, said school boards are indeed prepared to go through arbitration. But she also said a deal could technically come together before then.
“The parties can call for the mediators to come back at any time. The parties can make proposals to one another prior to binding arbitration as well. So I don’t rule out anything,” she said.
School districts have long picked from the same batch of health care plans, but a single contract has governed how costs are shared statewide since last year. The current contract expires Dec. 31, 2022. The next deal will cover health care for some 40,000 Vermonters — support staff, administrators, teachers and their families — for three years.
John Cochran, a neutral fact-finder, generally argued in a September report for a middle path on the two areas of greatest contention — premium cost-sharing and out-of-pocket maximums.
On premium cost-sharing, for example, Cochran recommended that licensed personnel, such as teachers and administrators, continue to pay 20% of the premium cost, in line with what state employees pay. The unions had pitched for licensed staff to have their share reduced to 17% in the first year of the contract and go up 1% each year thereafter. School boards wanted licensed staff to pay 22% of their premiums by the final year of the contract.
If the two sides do not reach a deal, an arbitration team will hear testimony from both parties by Nov. 15 and choose one of the proposals by Dec. 15. That binding decision would go into effect Jan. 1, 2023.
