Teachers seeking a position with the best health care benefits have much in common with real estate agents.

For both, the three most important considerations are location, location, location.

Teach in the Warwick or Ephrata Area school districts and your annual individual contribution toward health care benefits is zero.

Teach in Elizabethtown Area district, and the individual annual contribution is the highest in a county school district at $564.

Either way, compared to what most workers in the private sector are paying for health care, it's a great deal.

But now, school districts are negotiating to get better deals for their taxpayers.

Six teacher contracts settled this year call for increased contributions from teachers for their health coverage.

And districts whose contracts expire next year are targeting health costs. Officials in some of those districts acknowledge health care expenses are a key concern, but none would elaborate or speak on the record because of negotiations.

Officials commonly preface their remarks with, "I don't want to sound like I'm bashing teachers, but ..."

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that monitors and analyzes health care issues nationally.

According to its Web site (kff.org), the national average for the annual worker contribution toward health care benefits (for that one worker) in 2007 was $694. The average annual contribution for family coverage was $3,281.

That latter figure is where teachers realize the greatest benefits. At $3,021 a year, School District of Lancaster teachers pay the most of all county districts toward family coverage. Manheim Township's teachers pay the lowest family rate in the county, chipping in just $450 for the district's point of service option.

Adding it up
Why do teachers pay so little for coverage?

Those outside and inside the profession point to two factors.

The first is Pennsylvania Act 195, which became law in 1970. It allowed teachers to bargain collectively for salaries and benefits.

"I remember coming out of school in 1974 and looking for a job," said Chuck Trupe, who has served on the Eastern Lancaster County School District board for seven years. "I had considered going into teaching, but I was offered a job (at an engineering firm) for $13,000. The starting salary for teachers at that time was $6,000, so I chose to go into engineering."

With salaries that low, school districts used generous health and retirement benefits to attract teachers.

Collective bargaining led to higher salaries, but often health benefits were still given at no, or little, cost. A Lancaster County teacher earned an average of about $55,000 last year, based on information provided by districts.

County residents earned an average of $30,790 in 2004, the last year for which data is available from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Center for Workforce Information and Analysis, a state database, says the median household income in Lancaster County in 2004 was $48,960. That means half the households earned more than that figure while half earned less.

Statistics provided by the Pennsylvania State Education Association put Pennsylvania's average teacher salary for 2006-2007 at just more than $54,000.

A graphic on the PSEA Web site shows that five county school districts now offer a starting salary of $40,000. According to PSEA, six more districts will reach the $40,000 mark when new contracts kick in for the 2008-2009 school year.

The six contracts finalized this past year call for annual salary increases near 4 percent. They are: Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13, 4.1 percent; Warwick, 3.99 percent annually over three years; School District of Lancaster, 3.9 percent; Manheim Central, a three-year average of 3.85 percent; Penn Manor, a three-year average of 3.8 percent; and Lampeter-Strasburg, a three-year average of 3.99 percent.

By comparison, the Lancaster Workforce Investment Bureau reports total earnings of local workers in 2007 — minus educational service salaries — increased 3.1 percent.

Kelby Waltman, a field representative with the PSEA who works with half the districts in Lancaster County, said, "Salaries in Lancaster are pretty good. They're not York County good, but they're good."

"It amazes me when I see districts in other parts of the state settling for annual increases in the 5- to 6-percent range," he said. "In Lancaster County, there's still something of a glass ceiling of anything under 4 [percent] is OK."

Out of whack
Eastern Lancaster County board member Trupe said, "Teachers work hard, they put a lot of hours in. While some people say we pay them too much, I'm not sure I agree with that."

But he added:

"We did a bit of research in our own district to find out what people were paying for health care in other jobs," he said. In most cases, "teachers are paying a third of what everyone else is paying. The health care payments are so out of line."

Which leads to the second factor: the incredible rise of health care costs since 1999. According to the Kaiser Foundation, premiums increased more than 85 percent in that span. In 2007, the average annual health care premium in the U.S. was $4,479 for an individual and $12,106 for a family.

Each new school contract this year calls for increasing teacher contributions for health benefits, either by higher annual payments or larger co-pays for doctors' office visits and prescriptions.

Some districts, like Warwick, have formulas that require teachers to pay a percentage of their premiums.

This school year, Warwick teachers will pay 4 percent of individual premiums and 14 percent of family ones.

Cost of family
One of the biggest and most expensive concerns is family coverage.

Susan Friedman, Ephrata School District's solicitor, has worked 30 years in that capacity for districts in Lancaster, Berks and Chester counties.

"The philosophy I aspire to, and what I think is the fairest, is that the district pays the highest amount possible for an individual to make health care as inexpensive as possible for people who are working for you," she said. "They're doing a good job for you, they deserve it."

But she opposes overly generous coverage for families and spouses.

"Say you have two third-grade teachers who perform essentially the same job, have the same level of education and the same number of years in experience," she said. "They have identical responsibilities.

"Why should one of those individuals receive upwards of $10,000 in additional benefits just because they are married and have a family?

"This isn't about pay, it's about fair and equal treatment for all of your employees."

Solanco School District Business Manager Tim Shrom sees it this way:

"If a family comes to us free and clear, and by that I mean the spouse is not working, I have no problem providing health care," he said.

"But if they're coming to us because the private sector is charging them $480 a month and they come to us to save money, we're absorbing that shift."

The private sector can change its policies quickly while districts are bound by contracts.

"When I am in meetings with individuals from the private sector, I tell them they can't have it both ways," Shrom said. "They can't dump health care costs on us, then turn around and complain about their school taxes."

Getting back
The good news for taxpayers here is that districts here have fared better than others around the state in getting teachers to share more of the burden.

Different reasons are cited.

"There's that Pennsylvania Dutch fiscal management thing that pervades this county," said Lampeter-Strasburg Superintendent Robert Frick.

Open communication between labor and management is also credited.

Frick, whose district recently concluded an amicable contract negotiation, said, "We have a history of great relationships with our teachers' union. The president and I sit down once a month, and that way they know what we need and we know what they need."

The PSEA's Waltman takes a different view.

"I don't know that it's any less contentious in Lancaster County than elsewhere in the state," he said. "If you look at what teachers in other school districts are paying, those in Lancaster County do pay more [for health care] than their fair share."

Solanco's Shrom cited the Lancaster Employee Health Care Consortium as a key player in keeping costs down.

Formed in 1984 for districts operating self-funded insurance programs, the consortium includes PSEA field representatives in its discussions. A self-funded district pays its own claims, Shrom said, but districts in the consortium determine their fixed costs, which are then pooled for bidding purposes.

The consortium also is a part of the Diabetes Project, an initiative that stresses education and early diabetes detection and treatment.

"It may cost us an additional $2,500, but if we can do something to educate people about how to potentially avoid the disease, then we save money in treatment costs later on," Shrom explained.

Shrom said that when it comes to self-funded programs, school districts assume the lion's share of administrative work.

"As business managers, if we wanted to do this easier, we could all pay higher premiums to let someone else do the work and just walk away at the end of the day," he said.

Another theory which attempts to explain greater teacher contributions here centers on the lack of strident support for unions.

Friedman, who has worked through negotiations and strikes in districts outside Lancaster County, said, "Other areas [particularly in the coal and iron regions] are so pro-union that teachers know they will have support if they walk out.

"Would teachers here be able to sustain a strike because of health care?" she asked. "Do you think that would go over well in this county?"

Gene Freeman, Manheim Township School District's new superintendent, comes from Weatherly School District in Carbon County. "I can't speak in terms of Lancaster County," he said, "but I can say there was a real movement in support of unions [there]."

Freeman added:

"You have to remember that in many of those districts in northeastern Pennsylvania, teacher salaries are much lower" due to eroding tax bases.

Waltman, of the PSEA, said teachers in Lancaster County recognize the economic realities within their own districts, and that's more important than what happens elsewhere in the state.

It also helps to explain, he said, why there is such a discrepancy in what teachers here contribute for health care.

Noting that teachers in the School District of Lancaster pay the most in family contributions, he said, "Lancaster city isn't as well off as Conestoga Valley or Hempfield." The higher payment "is a recognition of that by the bargaining members in that district."

He added:

"In [School District of] Lancaster, the salary schedule is shorter. [It takes less time for a teacher to advance to higher pay levels.] "That's part of the trade-off."

He cited Columbia Borough School District as another example of a district in which teachers agreed to pay more for health care "in places where districts have economic issues."

A final factor involves the relatively low cost, and high quality, of health care in Lancaster County.

"The cost of insurance is cheaper here because the cost of care is cheaper here," attorney Friedman said. "And we're Lancaster County. There's less abuse of the system."

Shrom said, "We have great medical care at very reasonable prices. That's one of the reasons we are below national levels [in costs] and below most state levels."

That is also why close attention is being paid to a legislative initiative to create a statewide health care program for public employees.

That could pose a problem, Friedman said, because districts here would share the burden of paying higher premiums for teachers in urban areas such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

For the statewide measure to gain support here, Shrom said, "it would have to be regionalized.

"The 'big bang' theory, where you create one big pool of dollars that would result in low-cost areas supplementing high-cost ones, is not politically feasible," Shrom said.

"It has to be a regionalized thing, but the issue is how the regions would be carved out," he said. "If Lancaster was in a region with York, Dauphin, Lebanon and Adams counties, we would be OK. But if we're in a region with Berks and Chester counties ..."

Manheim Township's Freeman had experience with a state-run health care system in South Carolina and said premiums were high there.

"If you investigate other state-run benefit plans, you'll see people pay more."

"Health care costs have gone up astronomically," Freeman concluded, "and I really don't think they're going to come down."

---

Chip Smedley is a staff writer for the Sunday News. E-mail him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.