We are fortunate to be living in a place like Lake County, without pollution and hassles of a big city yet with abundance of opportunities including good schools and supportive community. At the start of the school year, looking at the smiling faces of our young children makes us remember the good things in life for which we are thankful.
As your school board, we feel privileged to be trusted with the education of our next generation. We appreciate the support we have received from our community over the years including the passage of Measure G. The bond measure has allowed us to improve the learning environment for our children enhancing their overall school experience.
The new school year promises many opportunities for our children. Our test scores continue to improve and our schools have shown consistent progress in addressing the needs of all of our students. We are very proud of our hardworking teachers, support staff and administration.
We also face the challenge of maintaining the long-term fiscal viability of your school district, and continuing the services to our students at the levels they have become accustomed to and deserve. We look forward to working with our teachers, staff and community in finding common solutions to any fiscal issues we may face.
We believe that our teachers, classified staff and administrators deserve to be fairly compensated and provided a good health insurance plan. Our belief is reflected in our current practices. The school district remains as one of the few employers in Lake County that continue to provide fully employer-paid medical, vision and dental insurance to their full-time teachers.
In the 2005-06 school year, Konocti Unified School District spent $3.5 million on employee medical insurance programs. In 2006-07, that cost has risen to approximately $4 million, an increase of 13.4 percent. We have been notified that the cost will further increase by 12.5 percent in the 2007-08 school year, making the cumulative increase over two years to almost 26 percent.
The rising cost of medical insurance has made it very difficult for the district to continue to fund medical benefits at the current level. The funding we receive from the state is limited and it has not kept pace with the sky-rocketing cost of medical insurance. This unreasonable increase in medical benefit costs has caused us to face two outcomes, neither of them desirable.
One of the undesirable effects of high medical insurance cost is lower salaries for our employees. Since most of the new revenues the district has received from the state have been consumed by the increasing medical plan costs, the district has not been able to regularly improve salaries for our teachers, resulting in the Konocti District becoming less competitive in attracting and recruiting good applicants for our vacancies. Our ability to attract, and in some cases retain, good employees is likely to be compromised in the long-term impacting the quality of education of our children.
Secondly, we have reached the point where virtually all monies available for compensation increase are being consumed by the skyrocketing cost of health benefits leaving a little in the way of actual salary increases for our employees. Only other, yet highly undesirable, option would be to reduce services and cut educational programs provided to our children. The need for these programs remains high and eliminating and/or reducing them may have significant negative impact on the neediest of our students.
The unaffordable nature of the medical insurance cost requires collective actions to avoid fiscal problems and to preserve the quality of education in our community. We highly value our employees and their desire to have a good medical insurance plan for the full-time employees and their dependents fully paid by the district; yet we also want to be good stewards of the district as entrusted by the community and protect the educational opportunities for our youngsters.
The California state legislature and the governor are currently exploring options for providing a single payer heath plan for California residents. Such a plan could result in significant savings for school districts and go a long way towards helping to alleviate some of the financial pressure we are currently facing. Recently, our board and the teachers union jointly authored a letter to California legislators urging the adoption of such a plan as soon as possible. We are all watching closely as this proposal makes its way through the political maze in Sacramento.
In the meantime, we are seeking any ideas, advice and input the community members may have to assist us in handling this issue. Please forward any written comments to the Superintendent”s Office. You may also e-mail your suggestions through the district Web site.
Editor”s Note: Carolynn Jarrett, Anita Gordon, Herb Gura, Hank Montgomery and Mary Silva sit on the Konocti Unified School District Board of Trustees.
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