"If I had known I was gonna live this long,
I'd have taken better care of myself."
By Dick Gale, SDEA Executive Director

Eubie Blake, renowned ragtime and jazz pianist, remarked about the importance of caring for your health shortly before he turned 100 years old. And it's true that all of us, whether we live to the century mark or not, understand the direct connection between our health and our overall sense of well-being.

In order to preserve the good health of their workforce, the San Diego Unified School District has negotiated with all of their employee unions, a comprehensive package of health and welfare benefits covering all staff members and their families. SDEA has worked actively for many years to ensure the maintenance of these benefits and acknowledges that these paid district benefits are properly considered, along with salary, as part of "total
compensation."

However, before looking at this issue of total compensation, it might be helpful to take a broader look at the whole issue of health benefit programs for school district employees, which began with a generation of teachers who retired prior to the advent of collective bargaining.

Beginning after the Second World War, family coverage became rooted, not only in the unionized sector, but in the non-unionized sector as well. And part of the reason is that most of us live most of our lives as part of a cycle that changes just about every 5-7 years, though at the time we think mostly about where we are at that moment.

Clearly it is impossible to generalize because this cycle does not apply to all of our members, nor do our members cycle at the same rate. But, it is likely that today's twenty-five year old beginning teacher has different needs than that same teacher will have 20 years from now with the addition of a spouse or significant other along with one or more children.

Similarly, today's fifty-five year old veteran teacher has different needs now than they did 20 years ago. In fact, some of our members will find themselves the legal guardian of a family member's child, or because of death or divorce, a single mom or a single dad.

The implementation of health benefit programs followed recognition that dollars expended on health benefit programs had more value than equivalent dollars spent on wages.

First, health benefit costs paid by the district are not subject to the District's payroll costs. Second, the value of district-paid health benefit premiums is not reported as taxable income to the teacher.

Salary has value to the teacher in terms of take-home dollars. Everyone asks and answers the same ques tion, What is my discretionary income? Health benefits have value to the teacher in terms of protection. The question becomes, What major medical expenditures are covered so that I don't have to worry about them eroding my discretionary income?

The value of health benefit coverage, then, is not the cost of the program but the protection that it provides. It is the peace of mind that major medical expenditures will be paid by the insurer. The value is real even if no major medical problems occur. Only audacity can explain the rationalization that if no illness or injury occurs that no value has been provided.

Yet, there is temptation to simply put a specific dollar value on the medical insurance program or to quantify the benefits "received" versus the cost of the premium. Indeed, when discussing the low-ranking of SDEA bargaining unit members in comparative salary rankings (35th of 38 districts), SDUSD takes the position that the data is misleading because it does not take into account other non-salary benefits, which they claim are far more generous in San Diego Unified than in neighboring districts.

The chart on page 5 of the May Advocate 2007 takes this quantitative approach as it compares the "total compensation" cost of teachers in each of the 36 reporting districts in San Diego County (data from 2005-2006). The ranking is based on the District's per employee cost for health insurance premiums plus the average teacher salary minus the average employee out-of-pocket cost for insurance.

The data shows that the per employee cost for benefits in SDUSD does exceed the county average. However, when combined with the average teacher salary cost, total compensation for SDUSD staff still ranks near the bottom quartile when compared to all San Diego County school districts (27th of 36 districts).

SDEA members value their health benefits and we believe that the benefit package is one of the best recruiting tools available to the District in their search for the next generation of teachers and certificated support staff. SDEA will continue to work side-by-side with other employee unions and management to mitigate the extraordinary increases in medical insurance premiums over the past few years that have driven benefit costs higher (see the graph on the last page for a recent look at health benefit costs as a percentage of the total SDUSD budget).