I have been asked may times in recent weeks about the unfunded mandates that I mentioned in the column on Dec. 22, 2023. While most of these regulations are well-meaning they all have costs associated with them, even when they are not financial in nature. Frequently the state places these regulations on the schools without providing the funding to fully cover even the most basic upfront costs required to meet the implemented regulation.

Pull Quote

Frequently the state places these regulations on the schools without providing the funding to fully cover even the most basic upfront costs required to meet the implemented regulation.

One of the most impactful areas of these unfunded mandates is employee benefits. So, I thought we would take a look at two different benefits and what the state requires vs. what the state provides the schools.

Employee insurance

In 2016 the legislature mandated school district employees be moved to a new state health care system. This insurance program requires that every employee have full benefits as long as they are projected to work at least 630 hours in a contract year (that is just over 3 hours a day during the school year). We also have to pay the full cost of benefits for each employee, even if the employee doesn’t take the benefits.

The state funding formula only provides for about 70% health care costs for our employees. That leaves the benefits of around 30% of our employees unfunded.

Leave

As with all medium to large employers there are laws regulating the sick leave benefits for our employees, this is mandated at 12 days per year. The obvious cost with these is that we must pay the employee that is out for the time that they are absent from work. The obscured cost in this is that for teachers, and most classified staff, we have to then pay for a substitute to meet contract and safety obligations.

For teachers the state funds about 2/3 of the cost of a substitute teacher’s daily rate in our district, for only 4 of the mandated 12 days of sick leave per year. They provide no funding to cover substitutes for personal leave or other types of leave that employees are entitled to. The state does not fund substitutes for classified staff or others that are on leave.

These are just two examples that impact the school district as a whole. I could go on to address regulations that have obscured costs, like the seemingly never-ending list of reporting requirements. On the surface reporting cost nothing but time, but as we all know time is money. Good employees deserve good benefits and state funding for benefits alone is short around $720,000 for our district each year.

The vast majority of the laws that have increased the burden on school districts were written with good intentions, but the collective unintended consequences of these laws and regulations continue to increase the gap between what the state funds and having what is required for, and needed for, our students.