Rochester area teachers emphasize the need for lower health care costs during negotiations process [Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.]

Post-Bulletin (Rochester, MN)

Jan. 16—ROCHESTER — As teachers in Southeast Minnesota have been negotiating contracts with their school districts, the issue of health insurance has been on their minds.

It's become a pressing issue. Teachers say premium increases are either chipping away at or outright robbing them of any salary increases they happen to get, forcing administrators to look for solutions in a number of ways.

"Either I get insurance or I get a paycheck,"

Kingsland Public Schools teacher Angela Forland said in June

as her district was trying to navigate a large increase in costs announced by its carrier. "(It's) so costly, in fact, that some owe the district money at the end of the year."

Rochester Public Schools has already come to a tentative agreement regarding health care coverage with its teachers,

and the district emphasized that feature of the contract as a cornerstone of its proposal.

Superintendent Kent Pekel said during negotiations with the district's teachers that RPS drafted a contract that emphasized more affordable health care coverage. He said they chose to do so because of an outcry from the teaching staff about the immense cost of medical care.

Instead of forcing teachers to weather large cost increases, Rochester Public Schools agreed to use $7 million of its reserve funding to help cover those premiums. Because of that decision, employees will see a decrease in their insurance costs in 2024.

That employee with a co-pay single plan will be paying $89 less per month than they had to pay in 2023. The employee with the co-pay family plan will be paying $14 less per month than they had to in 2023.

Before the district decided to use its reserve funding to help cover premiums, a teacher with a co-pay single plan would have had to start paying $575 a month — $179 more per month than they did in 2023. That would have equated to a 45% increase year over year. An employee with a co-pay family plan would have had to pay $1,540 a month — an increase of $377 per month. That would have represented a 32% increase.

In addition to covering a larger portion of employees' premiums, the district created a new category to choose from. Rather than "family," an employee can now choose the option of "single + child(ren)." Chief Administrative Officer John Carlson explained that since providing coverage for children is cheaper, that's a way to offer more savings.

"It's a fantastic improvement to our health care," said Vince Wagner, president of the Rochester Education Association, which is the district's teachers union.

Other teachers throughout Southeast Minnesota are still struggling to find a way out of the same predicament.

Earlier this year, multiple districts switched their carriers altogether and moved away from a common insurance organization called PEIP, which stands for Public Employee Insurance Program.

While moving away from PEIP may have helped, it didn't eliminate the burden of rising health insurance costs. In the case of Blooming Prairie Public Schools, the district still had a 14% increase in insurance costs over the year before when it left PEIP for another provider.

Another district,

Kasson-Mantorville, decided in March

to help its employees by providing a payment to offset insurance costs.

Now that teachers unions are knee-deep in the negotiating process, they are looking for more substantial fix than some of those temporary patches were able to accomplish. Kasson-Mantorville teachers are in mediation with their district leadership.

"ANY annual increase in salary is reduced by the $3,360 annual increase in health insurance premiums borne by the employee," the

Kasson-Mantorville teachers union posted on Facebook in December.

"For many teachers, this will mean they will be taking home less money than they did before."

Stewartville teachers are having a difficult time with the same process. Stewartville is also headed to mediation with the school district and the cost of health insurance is very much on their minds.

The Stewartville district's insurance premiums increased by more than 26% with the new year. And like in the case of Forland at Kingsland Public Schools earlier this year, that increase is taking teachers to a breaking point.

"Why do I work every weekend? I have no other choice," Stewartville teacher Jim Parry said. "This is the first time in my career (of) 23 years I've had to consider whether or not I can afford to continue teaching."

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