White County Board of Education approved new health insurance premium formula Thursday to reduce monthly costs for school district employees.
Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said some staff members were formerly seeing nearly their entire paychecks consumed by insurance costs.
“Some people were very excited,” Dronebarger said, “Our support staff, for the first time, felt they had affordable healthcare. I mean, some, in some of their cases, their premiums are going down in half, which is incredible for their families.”
Dronebarger said some employees, however, would see an increase. Fiscal Services Director Chad Marcum said the district moved to a unified scale where all employees receive the same contribution rate regardless of their job title.
“Instead of having multiple rates for different people, we went to one scale where everybody’s on the same rate, so the district pays the same toward a premium whether you’re a support staff or whether you’re a licensed teacher,” Marcum said. “It gets everybody on the same policy pricing regardless.”
The new model bases district contributions on a percentage of the state’s limited PPO plan. Marcum said the district will pay 90 percent of an employee-only policy, 75 percent for employee and children, 70 percent for employee and spouse, and 68 percent for a family plan.
“Going forward, as there’s a rate increase every year, then that’s a cost share,” Marcum said. “It’s automatically cost shared between the district and the employee. It doesn’t automatically always fall to the employee anytime there’s a health insurance increase.”
Under the previous system, support staff paying for a family plan under the Premier PPO Network S would have paid $1,600 per month. Marcum said that monthly cost will drop to $899 under the new formula.
In other business, the board approved a teacher pay scale correction to resolve a state reporting error that will result in a combined $114,669 annual raise for 121 teachers with master’s degrees. Additionally, officials agreed to seek student input on the design of displays for the 10 Commandments and other foundational documents following the recent passage of a new display policy. The next Board of Education meeting will take place on November 12.
