Norwich
The agreement, reached after a gubernatorial veto and weeks of wrangling in Montpelier, has left some Upper Valley school boards wondering how to balance their budgets and resolve ongoing negotiations with teachers unions, which are part of the Vermont chapter of the National Education Assocation.
Tom Candon, chairman of the Norwich School Board, said the district needs more information from state officials in order to put its negotiations and financial planning in order while keeping costs low for taxpayers. The School Board’s contract talks with Marion Cross School teachers have been in mediation since December.
“We hope that the (Vermont Agency of Education) will issue detailed information regarding the process that they will use to calculate the health insurance savings,” he said last week.
“Until we have this information, it is very difficult to assess the impact on Norwich; however, we hope to work closely with our teachers, support staff and the Vermont NEA to help limit an impact that would result in higher property taxes.”
In hopes of finding cost savings, Scott and the Vermont School Boards Association earlier in the budget process had advocated for teachers unions to negotiate health benefits at a statewide level, rather than with individual school boards.
Scott vetoed the state budget in May over the issue, setting up a veto session in June and negotiations with legislative leaders. The resulting agreement allows local school boards to negotiate individually with the Vermont NEA, but imposes new benchmarks that call for teachers and support staff workers to pay 20 percent of their health care premiums.
For context, the average cost split statewide in recent years has been 86/14, according to the Vermont Education Health Initiative, which offers teacher health plans throughout the state.
Banking on expected health savings, the state has cut $13 million from education fund payments to local districts.
In the first fiscal year, starting July 1, the fund will disburse $8.5 million less, followed by $4.5 million less the next year.
After the deal was announced last week, Geo Honigford, president of the VSBA and a member of the Royalton School Board, said school boards were being expected to obtain health care savings through teacher contracts but weren’t receiving any added help from the state to meet those goals.
“Same trouble,” he said in a telephone interview, “but now (school boards) face a budget cut.”
Honigford, a proponent of the plan for a statewide contract with teachers, also expressed concern that school boards could face complaints of unfair labor practices if they went to the bargaining table and told their local unions that the state-level cuts needed to be absorbed in teachers’ health care.
“Compromise is necessary,” Honigford said. “I get that. I’m not sure this achieved anything. I think there’s a point at which you have to consider that maybe nothing was better than this.”
Darren Allen, spokesman for Vermont NEA, which blasted the legislative deal last week, also said it was making contract talks more complicated.
“It’s disrupting negotiations further,” Allen said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “It’s making it much harder for local school board members to reach agreements with local educators.
“Our view is pretty clear: this backroom deal has the potential to tie the hands of local school board members — people who’ve been doing this stuff for decades, and now they have these demands from Montpelier making it more difficult for them to work for the people to elect them.”
Ed Connors, chief financial officer for Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, was loath to make predictions of any kind on Tuesday regarding the potential effect on the budget there — given, he said, that “we haven’t gotten any kind of guidance from the state.”
“Everything has changed,” he said, adding of the spending plan, “I don’t know what it’s going to look like this year. … I don’t know anything other than what I’ve read.”
As in Norwich, negotiations for Windsor-area schools with teachers and support staff, which comprise separate bargaining units, are in mediation. Connors said the state budget’s effect on the outcome was unclear there, too.
“It’s such a tenuous situation,” he said. “I think no one wants to comment on that.”
Scott defended the budget deal in a radio appearance on Tuesday, telling Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition host Jane Lindholm that he ultimately had achieved his greatest priorities.
“We were able to address those three issues: growing the economy, making Vermont more affordable and taking care of the most vulnerable,” he said. “And we did that with this budget.”
In response to concerns that closed-door discussions with the Legislature had resulted in a proposal that school officials had little time to plan for, Scott said there were “guideposts” available to help school boards implement the new health care standards, while also saving taxpayers millions if the plan succeeds.
He also noted that a new commission will investigate a possible statewide health plan, setting up future discussion of the idea in 2019, when contracts are set to expire.
“I would rather have instituted the plan in general,” he said, “ … but this is a compromise that we had to work out.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.