EDITORIAL: Crucial school issues ignored

Times-Tribune (Scranton, PA)

Nov. 26--The Scranton School Board has made itself into a statewide example of how not to run a school district. But the district's deep economic distress and the board's nascent effort to address them also illuminate several problems with school governance at the state level.

Pennsylvania has 500 school districts. Although they operate under a common set of laws and statewide standards, Scranton has demonstrated how far off the rails it is possible for a district to go. The board dug a $40 million hole for the district before the state Department of Education placed the district on its financial watch list.

One of the many ways in which the state government has failed is forgoing a statewide system for school employees' health care coverage. That's obvious now as the Scranton district, with a $22 million annual health insurance bill, tries to tweak coverage to reduce costs.

A statewide system would serve multiple goals. It would remove from the bargaining table the most contentious issue that promotes impasses and strikes. Insurers would compete in terms of price and service for access to such a vast market, reducing costs. In a consolidated state plan more of the money would go to actual care rather than administration, because administrative services would not be duplicated 500 times. And a statewide system would enable smaller districts to better afford quality coverage and use the benefits to compete for better teachers.

School employees already have a statewide uniform pension system which, despite its problems, serves them far better than the hundreds of fragmented, small pension plans for municipal government employees. A statewide health care contract is an equally sound idea. State government employees have such a system even though they, like teachers, work in every corner of the state amid different local economies.

Rep. Sid Michaels Kavulich, a Lackawanna County Democrat representing the 114th District, has introduced bills in the past to bring about a statewide health care contract. It's past time for the state government to take a more aggressive role in helping school districts deal with one of their most serious problems.