Salem schools to try again with funding measure

A board member said workers should pay more for their health insurance.
By D.A. WILKINSON
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
SALEM -- The Salem Board of Education will again try to pass a levy, but one board member voted against the move.
Board member Cathy Hergenrother said the district could eliminate the need for the levy if workers paid more for health insurance.
The board met Monday and agreed to place a 4.3-mill levy on the May ballot. It's the same levy that voters rejected in November. The levy would raise about $1.3 million a year for five years.
Without the levy, district projections show a $615,000 deficit at the end of the 2005-06 school year.
After the November defeat, the school board cut busing to state minimums and has pledged to close buildings and make other cuts to reduce the estimated deficit.
Board members Marguerite Miller, Sean Hart and Joe Rottenborn voted to put the issue on the ballot. Member Elizabeth Thatcher was absent.
Voted against
But Hergenrother voted against the issue. "I don't think we've made the big cuts we need to make," she said.
Having teachers and non-teaching workers pay for a bigger share of their health care costs would eliminate the need for the levy, she said.
The levy last year was designed to cover the projected $1.3 million deficit for the current school year without any cuts.
Figures were not immediately available on the district's health insurance costs. The cost of health insurance is included in the district's pension costs.
Both the teachers and nonteaching workers are in contract talks with the district.
Hergenrother said that the district should explore a 90 percent/10 percent or 80 percent/20 percent board-worker split of the cost of the insurance.
Workers presently have a $250 deductible before the insurance begins. After that, the district's 256 workers have no co-pay on doctors visits and pay nothing toward the insurance.
"We're not digging deep enough," Hergenrother said.
The board also voted to offer its teachers another chance at an incentive to retire; the cutoff date is March 15. Superintendent Stephen Larcomb said that 18 teachers are eligible.
Larcomb said, however, that the board would not immediately see savings because of the incentive payments to the retiring teachers.