Schools
Board Awards Administrators Additional Health Insurance Benefits
The only District 113 board member who opposed giving top administrators the added benefits called it an issue of "equity and fairness."
HIGHLAND PARK, IL — All but one member of the Township High School District 113 Board last month voted to amend five contracts in order to provide additional benefits to present and future administrators.
The district's superintendent, its three assistant superintendents and the principals of Deerfield and Highland Park high schools will see the district cover 100 percent of the health insurance premiums for family coverage under the change to compensation policy adopted at the board's June 17 meeting.
Tom Krieger, assistant superintendent of human resource and administrative services and one of the employees who received the added compensation, told board members the change was appropriate to discuss in open session rather than behind closed doors because it addressed benefits for a group of employees rather than individuals.
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"The contract amendments themselves are relatively straightforward but they raise a larger issue about benefits, and specifically benefits differentiation, among employee groups," Krieger told the board.
The district previously pays 76 percent of family health insurance coverage for its top administrators, the same portion negotiated by its non-union collective bargaining unit of educators. Both groups of employees already say 100 percent of premiums covered if they only enrolled in individual coverage.
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Krieger said the added benefits would be applied to those hired in the future as assistant superintendents, superintendents and principals. Recently appointed superintendent Bruce Law's contract already includes full coverage of health insurance and pension contributions, along with a $260,000 base salary, more than $7,000 for a car stipend every year and $5,000 in annual deferred compensation.
Covering 100 percent of health insurance premiums and payments to the Teacher's Retirement System "definitely makes these positions more attractive and makes it easier to recruit and retain employees. The consistency of assigning these benefits to a group rather than to individual employees is very compelling, especially from an HR perspective," Krieger said. The change would make hiring and negotiating contracts easier in the future, he said. "[For] liability purposes, it's much cleaner to tie them to employee groups rather than individual employees."
The board voted 6-0 to approve the amendments to the contracts of Kreiger, Assistant Superintendent and Chief School Business Official Ali Mehtani, Director of Student Services Tiffany Chavez, Principals Kathryn Anderson and Debbie Finn. Board Vice President Gail Byck voted "present" on the matter.
"I'm just philosophically opposed to some employees receiving different health insurance benefits than the majority of employees in the district," Byck said. "It has nothing to do with these employees or this employee groups it is just not something that I believe in. It comes down to what I think about health care [as] a right versus a privilege and about equity and fairness."
As a small business owner who has to pay for all her premiums herself, she said she would be "beyond ecstatic" to have an employer cover even 76 percent.
Jerry Lavin, president of the District 113 Education Association, which represents teachers in the district, said board members made public assurances when Krieger and Chavez were named to newly-created assistant superintendent positions in April that they would not also receive additional compensation, Pioneer Press reported.
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