It was mostly business-as-usual at Monday night’s Marfa ISD School Board meeting on the heels of announcing its superintendent finalist, Stephen McCanless, but a tense discussion regarding healthcare contribution rates and a surprising resignation following closed session was anything but. Board President Philip Boyd, Teresa Nunez, Paul Salgado, Jonathan Lockett and Jay Foster were present.
In June, Marfa ISD CFO Rosela Rivera warned board members about necessary cuts to the district’s healthcare contributions to employees or risk having to freeze employee salaries. “I don’t know that we can continue paying these high premiums for each employee if we’re paying $400 a month times 50 employees,” Rivera said at that meeting. “If we could slash that by $18,000, $20,000. We need to make cuts somewhere, we need to save somewhere.”
Board members had balked at the idea but agreed to table the discussion until Rivera could put a presentation together for July’s meeting. In the intervening weeks, the decision was made not to freeze salaries but to move forward with considering reducing the healthcare contributions.
As per state law, districts must contribute a minimum of $150 monthly toward employee health insurance, with the state contributing another $75. But health care premiums have increased dramatically in recent years, owing to “hospital and provider consolidation, which reduces competition and allows providers to charge higher prices,” according to the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS), which provides health care plans for most school employees statewide.
Determined by the Legislature, the state’s monthly $75 contribution rate has not increased since its inception 25 years ago, though the Texas Association of Health Plans (TAHP) estimates an average 35% premium hike for Texans buying their own insurance on HealthCare.gov in just the last year.
“We all know where we are with our revenues – they’re flat and they’re constrained,” Rivera began her presentation.
Though the district has historically contributed the entire amount of TRS ActiveCare plans, which Rivera noted has been a great perk for employees, premiums have risen such that a full contribution of $429 a month to cover an individual plan would cost the district $257,000 annually, impacting the budget negatively by $44,000.
Rivera listed several options for the board members to consider, but after moments of silence and great reluctance, the board unanimously opted to adopt a contribution rate of $325/month, which will cost the district $195,000 a year and add a positive net gain of $18,000 in the budget. Foster abstained from voting.
Considering the circumstances, Rivera said that employees have until August 31 to change their plan if need be.
Board members stressed that the $18,000 saved will go to other district needs like a new fleet of vehicles or cleaning of the track.
Following the formal announcement of superintendent finalist McCanless, the board also voted to contract Interim Superintendent Arturo Alferez as director of special programs beginning August 10. Under this new district role, Alferez will continue his work with early childhood learning centers and other grant programs and opportunities.
The meeting ended with two board resignations: Place 4 Trustee Rene Gonzales tendered his resignation to Boyd last week, and after some discussion, Boyd decided it was the best time to resign as well. Gonzales has not attended meetings since April and has said he has too many other job-related responsibilities to continue.
Boyd also cited a lack of time to handle the position’s responsibilities, but he and Gonzales will remain on the board until someone else is appointed. Boyd said he is pleased with the direction the district is taking and is looking forward to McCanless stepping into the role of superintendent in August.
“I feel really proud and good about the work we’ve done and the directions that we’re going, and I think I’ve been given a lot of positive feedback about [McCanless],” Boyd said. “I think he’s excited to come out here and get to work. We all feel good about the candidate, and good about school … and so I hope that the atmosphere is such that people want to be part of that, too. I know that this community is full of really good people –– smart people and dedicated people, and I’m hoping that some of those folks feel like this is something they want to be a part of.”
The board is accepting letters of interest for both trustee vacancies. Please deliver letters to the MARFA ISD district office addressed to Philip Boyd.
