Cost of health insurance got you down? Maybe run for school board

There’s been some sturm und drang since Orange Unified school board members hiked their stipends several hundred percent — on a consent calendar rather than after an open discussion — but getting all hot and bothered over the stipend itself might miss the bigger picture.

Yes, indeed, Orange Unified’s seven-member board approved raising the monthly stipend from $400 to $2,000 per member on Jan. 22. That’s a not-inconsequential $24,000 a year, vaulting Orange Unified’s members into the upper echelons of school board compensation in Orange County.

But the real fiscal value of these elected positions often resides not in that stipend, but in the health care benefits that go along with the job. And no one talks much about that.

Where else can you find a part-time gig that pays just a few thousand dollars for the work, but provides health benefits in excess of $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, even $50,000 a year?

It’s a perk that’s rather unique to elected local government officials (your city councils and water districts enjoy much the same benefits, giving them a reprieve from the full sting of insurance premium increases this year).

Consider: Two board members for the Orange County Department of Education had total wages of just $6,751 each in 2024. But their health care benefits cost $55,558 each.

Another OCDE board member had health benefits worth $32,482. Another’s cost $24,049. Another’s cost $19,006.

Yup, health care benefits can dwarf stipends. In Newport-Mesa Unified, board members earned less than $7,000, but received health benefits worth almost $44,000 a year. One Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified board member had wages of $12,020, and health benefits worth $36,109. In Garden Grove Unified, stipends were about $12,000 a year, while health benefits cost about $29,000 a year, according to data from the state controller’s office.

Ian Hanigan, spokesman for the Orange County Department of Education, where board members had access to the most generous health benefits (at $55,558), summed up the thinking of many:

“That figure reflects the full employer cost of the benefit plans available to OCDE board members, who receive the same health and welfare benefit options as OCDE employees. OCDE has historically maintained a competitive benefits package for its workforce, which is reflected in the reported cost.

“As with employees, the total varies by individual based on the plan selected and whether coverage is single or family. The figure you’re referencing represents the top end of the range for family PPO coverage, not an average across board members.”

Since then, OCDE has negotiated changes to its insurance plans, reducing its cost for comparable family PPO coverage to $43,549, Hanigan added.

‘Standard practice’

In Orange Unified, the poster child of the moment, board member compensation varies wildly.

One earned $11,860 in wages but just $226 in benefits. Another had $7,628 in wages and $20,395 in benefits. And several had wages of $5,250 or less, and health care benefits costing less than $200.

Stipends are based on attendance, spokeswoman Jacqueline Perez said. If a board member misses meetings, the pay is pro-rated. Discrepancies in stipend totals reflect those attendance records, as well as those who put in less than a full year of service, or the member’s personal choice to decline all or part of their stipend, she said.

It’s standard practice across California for school districts to offer board members the same health benefits offered to their employees, she said. Variations are due to the specific insurance plans selected by each member.

And as to why the pay bump was passed as a consent item rather than a discussion item: “The Board of Education’s action on January 22, 2026, was a unified step to bring district policy into alignment with newly enacted state law,” said Perez (more on that in a minute). “This item was agendized as a routine administrative update to comply with the revised California Education Code. The Board remains a unified governance team dedicated to providing a world-class education while maintaining professional oversight and fiscal transparency.”

“No, thanks.”

Some school board members don’t get much in the way of health care benefits for elected board members — presumably because most board members have full-time jobs somewhere else and those jobs provide health insurance.

Indeed, dozens of elected school board members in O.C. said “No, thanks” and took nothing, or almost nothing, on the health care benefit front.

That includes trustees in Los Alamitos Unified, Brea-Olinda Unified, Fountain Valley Elementary, Newport-Mesa Unified, Capistrano Unified and, yes, Orange Unified.

You can see all the data we have for Orange County school board member compensation online at https://bit.ly/4rsKHQz. Note that some districts — notably, Irvine Unified — are not included because they didn’t provide data for the state controller’s public pay database. Irvine said that’s due to formatting and compatibility issues, but it’s upgrading the employee information system and should be fine going forward.

At Irvine Unified, board members get a stipend of $5,564 per year and have the option to enroll in district health benefits, said spokeswoman Annie Brown. The district’s contribution to health benefits is $13,245 per board member per year. Though this information isn’t in the controller’s database, Irvine posts it on its own web site and supplies it to Transparent California as well.

Going up?

Expect to see a lot more of this.

In October, the governor signed AB 1390 by Assemblymember José Luis Solache, D-Lynwood, “to modernize monthly compensation levels for members of school district and county boards of education.”

Solache has said that, under the old law, board member compensation ranged from $60 to $1,500 per month — depending on the district’s enrollment — and those thresholds hadn’t been adjusted for decades.

In many communities — especially less affluent ones — such outdated stipends made it hard for folks to consider serving, he argued. This new law allows boards to hike compensation if they have the money to do it. The bill was championed by the California School Boards Association.

Does Orange Unified have the money to do this?

Well, the board obviously thinks so. In a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, the extra $183,000 a year or so this will cost is but a drop in the proverbial bucket. But it’s worth noting that Orange Unified faces the same stresses that most other California school districts face these days: rising employee costs and shrinking enrollment. Its first interim financial report goes into detail on all that; you can find it at https://bit.ly/4tluAGq.

We asked the districts if they’d be revisiting the stipend question soon. Garden Grove Unified said, right now, it’s not. Irvine Unified expects to take up the discussion in August. The rest weren’t quite so chatty. Stipends, up! But… perhaps… health benefits, down.

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