Consortium seeks to keep 2 schools

MERCER, Pa. -- The Western Pennsylvania Schools Health Care Consortium isn't going to let the Sharon City and Reynolds school districts leave the organization without a fight.
The consortium filed a request for an injunction Thursday in Mercer County Common Pleas Court asking the court to prevent the two districts from leaving. No hearing date has been set.
Both Sharon and Reynolds school boards voted recently to leave the consortium as of July 1, the beginning of its next fiscal year.
School officials in both districts cited a lack of faith in the administration of the seven-year-old consortium and particular dissatisfaction with its performance during the current fiscal year.
The consortium is a self-funding health insurance plan that covers 2,300 employees in 12 school systems. The member districts pay their insurance premiums to the consortium, which hires a third party administrator to run the service.
The consortium experienced a cash-flow problem in late 2002 that resulted in it assessing its member schools a total of $4.6 million in extra fees in February.
School officials in both Reynolds and Sharon said that raised questions about the program's administration, even though both districts said they had saved money on health insurance costs during the previous six years with the consortium.
Dr. Anthony Trosan, Reynolds superintendent, said his district and others asked questions about the operation of the consortium after the special assessment request but never got satisfactory answers.
The Reynolds School Board voted May 21 to withdraw from the consortium.
The Sharon School Board took the same action Tuesday, and both boards voted to join another health-care group of school districts known as Midwestern Health Combine effective July 1.
Violation of bylaws?
The consortium says, however, that the attempts to withdraw violate the organization's bylaws, which stipulate that any school planning to leave the consortium must give written notice to the consortium and all of the other member schools at least six months in advance of ending that affiliation.
That means both Sharon and Reynolds would have had to give that notice by the end of December.
Reynolds didn't notify the consortium of its plans until May, Trosan said.
Sharon did send a letter to the consortium at the end of December but it apparently wasn't received until some time in January. The letter said only that Sharon was considering leaving the group and wanted to reserve its right to do so.
Jeff Amon, outgoing co-chairman of the consortium, said the decisions by the Sharon and Reynolds school boards didn't allow adequate notice of their plans and violated consortium bylaws.
The consortium's budget and health-care network already have been set for the next fiscal year, and losing Sharon's 330 employees and Reynolds' 200 employees from the pool will adversely affect the budget and the discount rates the consortium was able to secure, he added.
There are also other expenses that were to be split between 12 members but would now have to be covered by just 10, thereby increasing costs for those 10 members, Amon added.
gwin@vindy.com