Miami-Dade

Health for Teachers

The School Board must decide whether to force teachers to pay for health insurance

Maria Delatorre from Ammons Middle School protests with about 200 other teachers and school employees in downtown Miami hoping to bring awareness to their battle with the School Board over health benefits.  Photo by Richard M. Brooks

By Jordan Melnick

Miami-Dade County teachers find themselves perilously close to losing the full health care coverage they have had for more than a decade, after a special magistrate’s recommendations left the school district’s 2008 health care proposal practically intact.

Special Magistrate Mark Lurie issued his nonbinding recommendations last Monday, two weeks after presiding over an impasse hearing between the district and the United Teachers of Dade. At the hearing, the district claimed financial hardships and high health care costs made fully covering teachers’ health insurance impossible.

Lurie recommended in the district’s favor on the greatest point of contention: the district’s proposal to introduce cost-sharing for a point-of-service plan generally considered the best health care option available to teachers. Under the district’s proposal, teachers would have to pay $53.18 per month for the POS plan currently used by 19,000 of them.

Lurie did make some concessions that favor so-called “First Decade Teachers,” a category nearly half of the district’s 25,000 teachers fall into. Lurie recommended they receive “flex dollars” to visit physicians not in their health care plans, and that they not incur this year’s 13.1 percent increase for dependent care coverage.

“The risk that the district runs from depriving the First Decade Teachers of financial oxygen is that some will succumb,” Lurie wrote in his decision. “Some … will face financial asphyxiation and be compelled to seek employment elsewhere.”

School Board member Marta Perez winced at this.

“I consider it embarrassing that the magistrate had to say to the School Board that beginning teachers cannot afford their proposal,” she said, denouncing what she called the board’s “let-them-eat-cake mentality.”

A proponent of full health care coverage, Perez called the School Board’s priorities “very skewed.”

“We’re paying high administration salaries that are appalling,” she said. “I think they should cut these salaries that will save us millions” to pay for teachers’ health insurance.

She also called the district’s proposal a “sort of bait-and-switch,” because hard-won raises given to teachers three years ago will in many cases be nullified by having to share the cost of their health care.

UTD President Karen Aronowitz considered Lurie’s concessions a small victory.

“I appreciate that the magistrate went beyond the district’s proposal,” she said. “He recognizes that teachers aren’t making it.”

Still, Aronowitz said the UTD “will never pit teacher against teacher in a plan that does not protect everyone.”

To Shawn Beightol, a 15-year Miami-Dade teacher and self-described educational activist, the magistrate’s recommendations leave veteran teachers in the lurch. 

“Ten years is an arbitrary number,” he said. “Up to 15 years, we’re all making within a few thousand dollars of each other, and we are the ones with more children.”

A constant critic of the district, Beightol said he rejects any compromise. “They can’t balance their budget by digging into teachers’ pockets,” he said. “There’s plenty of money. They are lying.”

At the heart of this dispute is a $36 million rise in health insurance costs that, according to the district, has forced them to introduce cost-sharing to the teaching profession’s most attractive benefit. The increase came nearly seven months ago, and the battle between the district and UTD has been raging ever since.

Under the district’s proposal, only teachers who choose the POS plan would pay a monthly premium; an HMO and neighborhood health plan would still be fully covered. The POS is, however, the most comprehensive and widely used plan. 

On March 12, hundreds of teachers rallied in front of the School Board building downtown to pressure the board to offer full coverage. Chanting, “We’re not wealthy, keep us healthy,” many teachers wore Band-Aids on their faces to illustrate the suffering due to the budget cuts. Two days later, Special Magistrate Lurie heard both sides at the impasse hearing.

The School Board now has the opportunity to vote on Lurie’s recommendations and come up with a final solution. If the board approves, teachers will find themselves having to pay for coverage for the first time in more than 10 years. The UTD will hold a ratification vote, but the School Board can impose the plan no matter the outcome.

Perez is confident that the School Board will not approve. “I don’t think the votes are there,” she said.

A majority of the nine-member board has to support the proposal and, along with Perez, School Board member Ana Rivas Logan has already spoken out against Lurie’s recommendations.

“I don’t understand the logic,” she said. “I think all our teachers need help. We have to find a way to keep teachers here, to show them that we care.”

Logan said she will vote to give teachers full coverage health care.

The long-term consequences of introducing cost-sharing are uncertain. As the well-attended rally suggested, a large number of teachers have grown dissatisfied with the district. Many, including Beightol, are considering leaving Miami-Dade County if things do not change. Aronowitz is keenly aware of this.

“The amount that is going to be paid in bitterness is not going to be made up for in dollars,” she warned at the impasse hearing.

According to district spokesman John Schuster, the School Board will meet with its staff in a closed-door executive session at 11 a.m. on April 16 to "discuss the direction of the health care issue."