Why don school employees share more of the costs of health and medical insurance with the Board of Education?
The matter of the sharing of the costs of health and medical insurance between our employees and the Board of Education is a mandatory subject of collective bargaining. Our employees do contribute to the cost of health and medical insurance in a range of 13- 15% of the cost of this insurance, dependent upon the bargaining unit to which employees belong. The Board of Education contributes the balance of 85-88%. Efforts are made at the time of every contract renewal period to increase the percentage of employee contributions. However, we must deal with the realities of collective bargaining in attempting to achieve this goal. Hard and persistent bargaining by the Board of Education with all our employee groups has, in addition to increasing employee contributions for health and medical insurance, resulted in a revision to our drug formulary program that has significantly reduced the costs to the school system associated with prescription drugs. This new formulary encourages and requires
