After two years of failed negotiations, Shoreline Unified School District remains at loggerheads with its classified staff over proposed cuts to health benefits.
After talks ended in February, Shoreline staff have continued to operate under a three-year agreement that was set to expire next month. Under protocol, districts renegotiate the terms of salaries, benefits and other conditions of employment on an annual basis.
District and union officials held nine meetings this school year, and three the year before, focused on updating the classified employee contract, but negotiations floundered on the proposal to replace health insurance with health savings plans, and to significantly lower the maximum amount the district pays out.
Health savings accounts function like untaxed savings accounts, from which users draw money for medical expenses. The district said it will actually lose money in the short term under the scenario, but will recoup losses in the long term by capping health care costs.
Last year, Shoreline teachers agreed to swap benefits for the accounts.
Markey Lees, who represents all Marin chapters of the California School Employees Association, said that under the district’s proposal, the amount provided for health insurance to single classified employees would drop by $2,699; for employees who support one other, the amount would drop by $4,691 and for those with families it would drop by $7,163.
It’s not so much the health savings plans that rankles employees—though they would prefer to opt into rather than be forced into them—but the reduction in benefits.
“By and large, no other district has come after health benefits in such an aggressive way, especially when we’ve pointed out the actual harm that they could do,” said Ms. Lees, who called the process “frustrating.”
Ms. Lees said the union presented a compromise to address the district’s concern about containing and predicting the costs of the health care plans. Currently, employees who were hired before 2013 have no caps to their benefits, while those hired after that date have lesser caps than those proposed. For single employees, benefits are capped at $9,299, and to $18,655 for those with a plus-one; for families, $25,163 is the limit.
The union proposed bringing all employees under those existing caps and accepting the district’s proposal only for new employees. But, according to Ms. Lees, the district was steadfast.
“You can’t negotiate when the person you are sitting across from never brings anything new to the table,” Linda Borello, the president of Shoreline’s chapter of the California School Employees Association who participated in the negotiations, said.
According to Ms. Borello, the district has failed to provide information repeatedly requested by the union in order to compare costs of the district’s proposal to other alternatives.
The union wanted to explore options, including changing their insurance carrier—a company that brokers coverage. Yet Ms. Borello pointed to the fact that Shoreline’s superintendent, Bob Raines, sits on the board of the current broker, Redwood Empire Schools’ Insurance Group, which she characterized as a “conflict of interest.”
And her frustrations extend further. The district has not raised salaries for classified employees since 2013, she said, and gaps in staffing for the special education program and school bus drivers are straining morale.
Last September, the district agreed to offer additional hours to special education and transportation employees but the agreement was not fully honored.
For Ms. Borello, an administrative secretary at West Marin School who has worked for the district for 15 years, the problems stem from the superintendent. “We have a superintendent who never did any homework, and never crunched the numbers or investigated what we are offering,” she said of the benefits negotiations.
Mr. Raines, who was hired in August 2016, was the subject in April of a parent-generated petition that asserted a vote of no confidence in him and the district’s board of trustee.
“We need a change, and if no change is going to happen, then we are all going to continue to be disgruntled workers until the board does something about the superintendent,” Ms. Borello said.
In recent months, Mr. Raines has come under heat from parents in particular over his part in a fiasco with West Marin School Principal Matt Nagle concerning Mr. Nagle’s decision to run for Marin County Superintendent of Schools.
Mr. Raines has been blamed by parents and staff members for the threat to Mr. Nagle’s job and for a lack of transparency and inclusion in the decision-making process.
Yet according to Ms. Lees, the stalled classified staff negotiations originate with the board.
“The board of trustees have given the superintendent his marching orders, and I think they have told him that they are not going to approve anything that doesn’t contain the new cap,” she said. “We are just frustrated with the messenger.”
Mr. Raines told the Light that he was hesitant to dive into the details of the negotiations.
“When you have a lot of meetings, sometimes a residual disagreement shows up again and again and that makes it hard,” he said. “Negotiations always have the potential to be uncomfortable…discomfort overlays our discussions. We all need to press the reset button and come to the table with some fresh eyes and ears.”
For her part, Ms. Lees said she wonders if it is worth pursuing negotiations at Shoreline for this coming year, given the gridlock. Instead, she said, they will likely have to focus on agreeing to the terms in effect as far back as the 2016-2017 school year.
In the meantime, the classified employees will maintain their current contract, and negotiations are scheduled to begin again next fall.
Ms. Borello says that time is of the essence, as they have already lost one employee over the threat of capping health benefits and no promise of a salary raise in the near future.
While most of the 15 other Marin chapters represented by the union have already successfully bargained contracts for the upcoming school year, Shoreline is the only district without an updated contract worked out for as far back as 2016-2017.