As you know, Denver voters in November approved $56.6 million in mill levy funding to benefit our kids, our educators and our schools. (We shared in our Dec. 14 Teacher Weekly how this helped boost educator pay this year.) Learn more about how these funds  will be invested to support our students in these one-page handouts that also can be shared with families and community:

If you have questions about the mill levy or the bond, please contact Dustin Kress. 

Instead, what we have clearly heard from you, our educators, and from other DPS employees is concern about the high cost of health care. This is a very serious concern, not just in DPS but for school districts and other workplaces across the country. 

What's being discussed? It's important we bring down these costs so that health care is more affordable for our educators. DPS is one of the only districts that gives benefits money in cash to employees who don't join our health plans; other districts, by contrast, do not pay a cash benefit to those who do not elect insurance. Instead, they use that money to lower health care costs for those who do join their health plans. 

What does this mean? The current system means teachers and other employees have less incentive to join a district health care plan, so we've seen employee participation fall. In turn, lower employee participation (particularly of healthier employees) means higher health care costs for those who do participate. Annually, we pay about $20 million per year to employees who don't join a district health care plan.

What's happening now? We've discussed this issue at length with the Benefits Board, made up of representatives of all our union partners. A large majority of the union representatives on the Benefits Board have said that for new employees only we should stop paying cash to those who do not join our health care plans, and instead use that money to lower health care costs for everyone who does join. We are in agreement that in no case should the dollars the district contributes be lowered. The question is, what is the best use of those dollars to lower health care costs for all?

We know DCTA has concerns about this, and we look forward to working with DCTA on our shared objective of lowering health care costs. Those conversations began Monday night in our first negotiations session on our master agreement.

Moving forward, we will be bringing you regular updates in Teacher Weekly as negotiations progress. These are currently scheduled every other Monday. Please know that we have asked DCTA leaders if they would be willing to provide joint updates on these sessions rather than separate union and district communications -- we know you get plenty of email! We'll keep you posted.