This commentary is by Steve Dale, who is the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association.
A critical function of a school board is to negotiate contracts that are responsive to the needs of the taxpayers and students served by a school district and that are also fair to the teachers and staff employed by that district.
The South Burlington School Board, after seeing two years of significant property tax rate increases impact the community, offered a compensation package to their teachers that included an innovative health care proposal that would have saved both the taxpayers and teachers money. The health care plan offered by the board was not only less expensive, it provided fundamentally the same level of health care coverage employees currently have.
When the South Burlington Teachers Association refused to accept the board’s offer of a more cost-effective health insurance plan, it made no alternative proposal that would offset some, if not all, of the incremental expense to taxpayers of preserving the current health care benefit or the rationale to forgo savings with an alternative plan. In doing so, the association is demonstrating that it is out of touch with growing concerns about property taxes.
The South Burlington board is leading an important conversation with their community about the need to adjust our current health benefits structure for public school employees.
Property tax rates, and property tax burdens on many Vermonters, have grown substantially in recent years. The cost of health care to public school districts is contributing to these rapidly rising taxes. Since school districts spend nearly 20 percent of total compensation on health insurance benefits, it was entirely appropriate for the South Burlington board to offer an alternative health insurance package in an effort to curb increases in property tax rates.
School employees have been largely insulated from the health care costs and challenges that all other Vermonters have been experiencing for over a decade. Vermont’s school districts provide very generous health insurance benefits to their employees – among the most generous health insurance benefits available to any Vermont employees in either the public or private sectors.
Vermont’s public school employee plans have been materially unchanged in two decades. As different plan designs became available to schools, local unions have actively resisted those new plans even being offered to employees.
Local unions have also been resistant to school employees having a greater share in paying the premium costs of these generous health plans. Agreements negotiated between boards and the unions have often resulted in increases in salary in order to offset any small increases in employees’ contribution to health care premiums. This dynamic has left school districts, and therefore property tax payers, bearing the lion’s share of the cost of health care that has consistently outpaced the cost of living.
The South Burlington School Board ought to be commended for its efforts to respond to the concerns of its community by crafting a health care proposal that would have saved taxpayers and teachers money. The fact is, health care reform means change is coming to all Vermonters. The South Burlington board is leading an important conversation with their community about the need to adjust our current health benefits structure for public school employees.
