Kenai Peninsula Borough School District teachers and support staff are returning for the new school year without a new contract. Both the Kenai Peninsula Education Association and the Kenai Peninsula Educational Support Association began renegotiating their contracts with the district back in February.
Both groups’ contracts expired in June and healthcare is the largest sticking point in the negotiations.
Currently, the district offers employees two plans. Staff can choose either a high-deductible plan, of which the district pays 90 percent of employee premiums, or the traditional plan, of which the district pays 85 percent of premiums.
Both of the associations’ contracts call for the district and employees to split premiums in half if premiums rise above a designated cap, which happened last year.
Now the associations want that cap to be increased or eliminated altogether. Rachel Sinclair is the president of the Kenai Peninsula Educational Support Association, which represents education support professionals.
"It's really tough to make ends meet when the majority of your check is going to health care," she said. "It's a big percentage anywhere between 18 and 24 percent and sometimes higher. Very few is lower than that."
David Brighton is the Kenai Peninsula Education Association president, which represents the district’s teachers. He called negotiations "demoralizing."
He says the associations made a couple of different proposals to the district but he says they haven’t received a response. The district’s most recent proposal in February did not raise the cap for healthcare premiums both groups pushed for.
"It would be nice if we could see some movement from the district," he said. "It's been frustrating that since I've been involved we have always gone to arbitration, and I'd like to see us not have to go through the wait time to get an arbitrator to come up and listen to the two cases and create a ruling."
District spokesperson Pegge Erkeneff says there are serious conversations happening between the two sides.
"The cost of healthcare rising is affecting everybody," she said. "It's in the millions of dollars affecting the district. So we look forward to continued negotiations between the district team and the associations."
For now, both associations will operate under the old contracts.
