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Health Insurance Costs Increasing for Georgia School Boards

June 17th, 2013

Starting next month, Georgia school boards will have to pay more for health insurance for employees in their school systems. That’s due to a recent resolution unanimously approved by the state Board of Community Health.

The largest increase boards will pay is for employees who are non-certified, such as school bus drivers, janitors and cafeteria workers. Those costs are going up by more than 33 percent.

Angela Palm with the Georgia School Boards Association says that’s difficult for school boards because employee health care costs have been steadily rising. And Palm says the State Board of Community Health is expected to raise the costs again for the next fiscal year.

“So as they have struggled with their budgets, with the state cuts, loss in local property tax revenue and other rising costs, this has been huge problem for them.”

She says as a result of the increases, several school boards are considering outsourcing a number of their employees. That’s the case with the Cherokee County School System. District Spokesperson Barbara Jacoby says the county school board voted last week to outsource its grounds maintenance operations and is expected to consider next month whether to outsource its janitorial staff.

“Our employer paid state health benefit plan premiums are going to increase by $4 million dollars for next school year, so that is an increase we can’t absorb into our budget, not when it’s coupled with sequestration, continuing state austerity budget cuts and a slowly recovering local tax digest.”

Jacoby says if it outsources its janitorial staff the district will save $3 million dollars.

She also says it plans to ask any company it contracts with to keep its existing employees.

The rising cost also one of the reasons the Henry County School Board decided in April to outsource its custodial employees.

J.D. Hardin is spokesman for the school system.

“When you start looking at the custodial employees, it was a significant amount of money that was going to be saved over the time period and thus it pushed them in to the vote to outsource.”

Hardin says a large number of employees that lost their jobs due to the decision are expected to be hired by the company the school system is contracting with.

The Department of Community Health says the board approved the rate increases to support the financial stability of the state health benefit plan.