Teachers File Grievance With Board Of Education

At a special Board of Education meeting Monday night, leaders of the Waterford teachers union pleaded their case that the school district has been taking too much money out of their paychecks for health and dental insurance.

Union president Martha Shoemaker is alleging the district is charging the teachers up to $494.56 more this year than they should be for dental and health insurance. The problem is the district is charging teachers the costs associated with fully insured plans, when the district has a self-insurance model, she said.

“We just want to figure this out,” Shoemaker said.

The union filed the grievance on Oct. 17 with Superintendent Jerome Belair, who denied it. The union then took it to the next level, , which has until Jan. 30 to respond. If the board denies it, and the union is still not satisfied, the grievance will go to binding arbitration.

The union is seeking retroactive pay for the amount taken out since July and the future amount corrected for the rest year. The union did not calculate how much money that would be, but it is between $178.46 to $494.56 per person for the year depending on if the person has an employee plan, a two-person plan or a family plan, according to union documents. There are approximately 260 teachers in the union, Shoemaker said.

The Specifics

Shoemaker alleges the district is charging premium rates for health insurance associated with a fully insured equivalent rather than an allocation rate associated with the town’s self-insurance model. The self-insurance model should avoid certain fees such as federal taxes, but those fees are still being charged, Shoemaker said.

“Why are we paying for a product we aren’t getting?” Classroom Federation Teachers representative Michael Ozga said.

The union filed the grievance on Oct. 17. Belair rejected the grievance on Nov. 17, both on a technicality and on merit.

Belair rejected the grievance on technical matters because the teachers did not file within 35 days of when the new premiums went into place on July 1. On July 28, Ozga and school district attorney Anne Littlefield had an "extensive conversation about the very issue the grievance addresses," and yet still no grievance was filed until Oct. 17, Belair wrote in a letter to the union. 

Shoemaker said she didn’t file the grievance sooner because she didn’t realize it right away. Grievances have to be filed within 35 days after the union knows about the issue or else they are nullified, she said.

“That’s avoiding the meat of the issue,” Ozga said.

Belair also denied the grievance on merit. The district is charging the teachers 18 percent of the premium, something Shoemaker does not deny, and there is “no contractual language requiring usage of the allocation rate,” Belair wrote in a letter to the union.

At the meeting Monday, leaders of the teachers unions pleaded their case. Then the board met for approximately 45 minutes in closed session. Belair refused comment after the meeting, saying the grievance was ongoing.