Workers’ compensation costs rise; Unified focuses on safety

Feb. 23-- Feb. 23--RACINE -- In a school district that is struggling to make ends meet, every expense matters. Workers' compensation costs at the Racine Unified School District have increased significantly over the last three years, so the district is looking to bolster safety practices to decrease costs.

The district's workers' compensation insurance premium was just less than $1.5 million in 2015, but rose to about $2 million in 2018. Shannon Gordon, Unified's chief operating officer, expects that the premium will increase again this year, as it is figured using a three-year average.

Premiums aren't the only costs incurred by the district when an employee is injured. If a teacher cannot immediately come back to work due to an injury, the district might have to hire a substitute, and sometimes Unified brings back injured workers on a part-time basis and must pay them as well as the substitute.

"Part of our goal is to be more transparent about what sort of the true cost of workplace injuries are in an effort to bring more attention to improving our safety culture and climate across all of our schools," Gordon said.

From July 1 through Feb. 21, Unified employees reported 382 on-the-job incidents, some of which resulted in injury. Not all of them required medical treatment or time off. Only 69 of those incidents have resulted in workers' compensation claims so far. Typically, most of the incidents are student-related, but the highest-cost claims result from slips, trips and falls, according to Jill Montee, Unified's safety and risk management specialist.

So far this school year, 70 slips, trips and falls and 185 student-related incidents have been reported. A student-related injury could be unintentional, or could be the result of breaking up a fight in the hallway or lifting a special-needs student.

The district has no assault claims so far this school year, Gordon said.

For the same time period in the 2017-18 school year -- July 1, 2017 to Feb. 20, 2018 -- workers reported 333 incidents that resulted in 79 workers' compensation claims.

Other workers' compensation claims involve strains from carrying, pushing or pulling objects and injuries resulting from repetitive motions. Teachers typically file the largest number of claims, as they are by far the district's largest employee group, with about 1,600 members.

'Fairly significant'

During a Feb. 4 meeting, School Board President Bob Wittke said that the increase in workers' compensation costs were "fairly significant" and asked if the district could do anything to promote a safer environment.

Higher costs aren't necessarily due to more claims, Gordon said in an interview, but can be attributed to individual claims that are more costly and the rising price of healthcare in general.

The district has been working to ensure employees have the right safety tools at their fingertips and that they use them. A few years ago, Unified purchased bite guards to protect educational assistants at Wadewitz Elementary who work with certain special-education students.

"That one particular year, there seemed to be an increase in bites from the students there," Montee said. "In an effort to try to alleviate some of that, we bought Kevlar sleeves."

Gordon said that sometimes, assistants and teachers are reluctant to use those safety tools, if they seem like a barrier to making connections with students. But the district encourages them to do so anyway.

Gordon said that Unified instructs employees to report incidents even if they don't require treatment, as the district logs that information so it can identify trends like weather-related or site-specific incidents.

"We want to make sure that we are making data-driven decisions and with limited resources, we want to make sure that we're investing in the things that give us the greatest opportunity for increasing our safety," she said.

This data gathering could lead to changes at the building level, such as ice guards at the entryway of a building to prevent snow from sliding down and hitting anyone or using different, less slippery products on its floors.

Getting back to work

Gordon said that the district has found outcomes are better for employees when the district gets people back to work, in some capacity, as quickly as they are able.

"It's that emotional factor," Gordon said. Teachers in particular, she said, often don't like being away from their kids and they want to come back to work.

"But we want to make sure they're able to do that safely within their restrictions," Gordon said.

For example, a teacher with an injury that prohibits teaching a full class might come back as a one-on-one tutor until he or she is well enough to return to the classroom.

Depending on the injury and the person's restrictions, sitting at home for a few months can make coming back challenging, especially for those who do manual labor, Montee said.

"It's that emotional factor ... teachers (in particular) don't like being away from their kids; they want to come back but we want to make sure they're able to do that safely within their restrictions." Shannon Gordon, chief operating officer at the

Racine Unified School District

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