Caren Diedrich and Terry Shimek like to talk about the fact that nobody wants to talk about the "800 lb gorilla in the room". Funny...they don't talk about it themselves! All they do is talk about nobody wanting to talk about it.Guess that's our cue...our raison d'être, s'il vous plait.
...and that's French for , "Yeah, baby! We'll talk about it!" We'll talk about whatever needs to be talked about.
We've said it before...that the SPASD budget is between 80 and 85% personnel costs. Roughly two-thirds of that 80-85% is salaries; the rest is fringe benefits--largely health insurance and dental insurance premiums.
How much? How about $11.5 MILLION just for the 2009-10 school year alone! That's right...and it's all public record. If you review the "check runs" from Finance Committee or school board meetings, you'll see that we pay about $870K per month on average for health insurance premiums, and another $100K per month for dental premiums.
And, for 2010-11, not only are we adding 22.4 more positions, but the costs are projected to increase by 5% for health insurance and 7% for dental insurance.
- A 5% increase to health insurance costs for existing employees means an additional $430K to the 2010-11 budget.
- A 7% increase to dental insurance costs for existing employees means an additional $80K to the 2010-11 budget.
- At an average cost of $13,400 per employee times 22.5 new employees, translates to an additional $302K to the 2010-11 budget.
- That comes to a grand total of $810K for the 2010-11 budget for health insurance and dental insurance premiums alone.
The insidiousness of these costs is, like a number of the nastier STDs, they represent the gift that keeps on giving. These costs INCREASE every year and with every new employee.
Sun Prairie's Very Own Silent Caste System? You've heard of "stickin' it to the man"? Well, here in the Sun Prairie school district, we're sticking it to the very people (you know...the ones we value so much as demonstrated by Birthday KitKat bars) that are working deep in the trenches for the lowest wages: AFSCME Local 60 Support staff. These are the people that keep the buildings clean, cook and serve the breakfasts and lunches, playground aides, and serve as teacher and student aides.
They are paid the least amount for wages (well below the Adminosphere) and yet get stuck paying a phenomenally large portion of their health insurance premiums! These are the people that can LEAST afford to pay more out of their pocket. While those whose salaries are in the Adminosphere and the Culverosphere pay mere pocket change for their insurance "benefits", Local 60 members pay out "real money". To use a more recent analogy, while teachers and administrators fork over about the cost of a couple of large pizzas monthly for their benefits, Local 60 members fork over the equivalent of several MONTHS worth of grocery bills! Why are we stickin' it to Local 60?
What Needs To Be Done
First...we need to establish a benchmark for what percentage employees should pay out-of-pocket for their insurance benefits. Some will argue, but we suggest that a good place to start is state employees. According to 2009 data, Wisconsin state employees pay about 6.15% of their health insurance premiums. And, with the state budget woes, the potential to increase that percentage is high.
Poor local 60 is already paying 9% of their health insurance premiums and a whopping 14.5% of their dental, while teachers and administrators are paying WELL below of even the share that state employees pay. Those percentages need to be pushed back down to the zone of reason.
Second...we need to establish a level playing field. Eliminate the caste system mentality and have ALL district employees pay the same percentage. We value ALL employees equally...right? Then SHOW it!
Third...teachers and administrators are going to need to pick up a higher percentage of their health insurance costs. Oh, they won't like ole SP-EYE for this stance. But...you know what? Tough tooties. They have one hellacious deal, and we need to stop listening to the whining and start pushing. We understand and would push back on this ourselves, but it's fair and just.
Fourth...we need to do more to work towards joining with state employees so that the cost of these premiums is lowered.
The most important thing to understand is that Rome wasn't built in a day, and similarly, creating a level playing field will not be an overnight solution. We need to establish the benchmarks and communicate to the unions a plan for moving contracts to equity. What's good for state workers, is most certainly good enough for school district employees.
There...NOW the 800 lb gorilla has been (at least partially) exposed. Let the fireworks begin.
SP-EYE disclaimer: Administration will probably declare: All those figures are wrong! But they will offer no attempt to correct them., So let's just head that one off at the pass. The monthly district premium costs come directly from the last 12 months of district check runs. Those are fact. The average administrator salary, $93,000(2009-10) comes from DPI data. Same for teachers... average salary is $47,991 . Premium shares come directly from employee contracts obtained from the district website. The only question mark in the bunch was coming up with an "average" salary for Local 60 workers. (These folks get paid somewhere between $11 and 18.00 per hour, and retire at an average pay of about $17 per hour). They all get paid hourly (vs. salary) and work different numbers of contract days. We took Support Staff salary costs from the annual budget documents and divided that by the number of Local 60 staff. Then we checked some HR tables from school board packages. Subsequently in the worst case scenario, we believe the "average" local 60 salary used here ($24,000) to be biased high.
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