School District to Review Post-Retirement Benefits for Staff

Without collective bargaining agreements in place, the will now join others in the area in reviewing employee post-retirement benefit plans.

Business Manager Shawn Yde said the district began working on a comparability study of post-retirement benefits of other districts in 2002, but the implementation of Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill changed the landscape of employee benefits.

Since the collective bargaining agreements expired, the School Board has issued post retirement benefits to , but a policy has not yet been adopted to guide the board on what to do with other retirees. The old contract with teachers included a severance package of 110 days compensation, 1/12th of a day's pay for each unused sick day, and the ability to stay in the district's group health insurance plan paying the same premium until reaching Medicare eligibility.

The School Board on Wednesday approved a process and the creation of a committee to study those benefit plans.

The process detailed Wednesday calls on the committee to review current benefits, study benefit offerings of other public schools, review possible changes to benefit structuring, survey employees to solicit feedback on benefit structure and engage the assistance of an actuary to perform cost estimates on various scenarios.

Yde said not all districts engage actuaries, but he said the district has done it in the past and found it useful.

In the end, the committee is expected to present a comprehensive benefit plan. Yde said he expects the committee to present a post-retirement benefit study by March 1, but that timeline depends on the completion of actuarial services.

When asked about the possibility of comparing private sector benefits, Yde said it is difficult to compare different occupations, such as bankers and teachers. School Board member Cheryl Maranto added the structure of compensation is significantly different between the public and private sector.

When asked about comparing benefits to private schools, board President Kathy Rogers said those comparisons are not useful because public teachers are required to have more state certifications than private school teachers.