Unhealthy Proposal: M-DCPS could take away full health care for teachers

Representatives of the Miami-Dade County School District and the United Teachers of Dade met with a special magistrate Friday to decide the fate of Aralis Arca and her 12-year-old daughter.

Arca, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Glades Middle School, has a congenital heart defect and her daughter has Type I diabetes. For four hours, she sat patiently in a conference room in M-DCPS headquarters downtown, listening to UTD lawyer Mark Richard make the case that she and the 38,000 members of the UTD bargaining unit should receive full health care coverage.

"We are down to bone marrow," Richard said in his opening statement. "They keep saying we can't impact this, we can't impact this, we can't impact this, but we can impact all these people."

In the end, he said, "the choice [is] always to take from the teachers."

Nearly four months into the year, the UTD and the district have not come to an agreement on a 2008 health care package. The district's last proposal, "Scenario 8," offered to fully cover two health care plans -- an HMO and an NHP -- but introduced cost-sharing for a point of service plan, accepted by both sides as the higher-tier product. It also did away with a split-coverage option that allows dependents to be on a separate plan.

The UTD bargaining unit rejected the proposal in a ratification vote on Feb. 11.

"Our members do not trust the slippery slope to which we are being driven," UTD President Karen Aronowitz said at the time.

A long-standing benefit, full-coverage health care is one of the teaching profession’s main draws. The district's decision to introduce cost-sharing comes as a result of state budget cuts and a 13.1 percent increase in the cost of health insurance over 2007.

Under Scenario 8—which, for all intents and purposes, remains the district's proposal—teachers with no dependents would pay $53.18 a month for the POS plan. Those insuring a family would pay up to $661.87 a month, a 23 percent increase from 2007. Of the bargaining unit’s 38,000 members, more than 19,000 currently are on the POS plan.

Arca, who is now on the HMO plan that would remain fully covered under Scenario 8, said she would like her daughter to be on the POS plan. The reason is simple: the two vials of insulin her daughter requires each month cost $150 under the HMO, compared with $40 under the POS. But, as Scenario 8 does not allow split coverage, Arca would have to be on the POS plan herself and thus pay the $53.18 monthly fee.

This, she said, is not an option.

"If this does not get resolved," she said at the impasse hearing, "I will have to leave the teaching profession ... for no other reason than I cannot afford it."

The UTD estimates the cost of fully funding health care from July 1 to the end of the year at between four and eight million dollars.

"In the weeds of a $3.1 billion-dollar budget, there must be eight million," Richard said at the hearing.

Richard introduced various cost-saving measures at the hearing, including extra teaching periods for willing teachers and putting some administrators back into the classroom. Either of these options, he said, would allow the district to divert money otherwise allocated for hiring new teachers to fully funding health care.

But Deputy Superintendent Ofelia San Pedro maintained that the district is too financially strapped.

"We've seen our utility expense skyrocket, our fuel has gone up for busses, insurance is up, and the latest cost-driver is food," said San Pedro, citing a five-million-dollar hike in the cost of milk. "And it looks even worse for 08-09."

But Richard cast doubt on what he called the district's mantra of "We have no more money." When he asked San Pedro whether the district would find the money to fully fund health care if ordered to by the school board, she answered, “Yes.”

After questioning San Pedro, Richard called Arca to testify. She is the UTD steward at Glades Middle, as well as the cheerleading coach and head of the Hispanic Heritage Committee.

"I love being a teacher," she said. "It has been my dream since I was three years old. I could have been anything else, a doctor, a lawyer. But as far back as I can remember, I don't remember wanting to be anything else.”

A single mother of three, Arca said she would have to leave teaching if the magistrate recommends in favor of the district.

"With the cost of living, you can't make ends meet," she said. "You are literally living paycheck to paycheck."

Turning her back would not be easy, she said.

"Leaving the teaching profession, I would go through the six steps of mourning. It would be like grieving something."

The magistrate has 15 working days to return his recommendation.

Published in the Miami SunPost on March 20, 2008.