Tentative agreement continues to be questioned
THE DALLES — On June 28, representatives from the District 21 Education Association [D21 EA] and the North Wasco County Education Support Professionals [NWESPs] unions, representing the licensed and classified staff of the North Wasco County School District [NWCSD] respectively, met with district representatives in a grievance hearing.
The formal grievance, which, according to a joint statement issued by the NWCSD, D21 EA and NWESPs, was received by the district on June 21, and was made on the grounds of a contractual violation on behalf of the district, due to the apparent incorrect implementation of monthly premium costs for dental and vision insurance during the 2023-24 school year.
According to the statement, the error had been discovered on June 13 by the district during the preparation of the implementation of the tentative agreement made between the NWCSD and both unions during the fifth employee contract bargaining session, which took place June 12.
“Upon discovering this clerical error and contractual violation, the district immediately took steps to notify Alan Moore, Uniserve representative for both unions, of the issue and to discuss next steps and potential solutions,” the statement said.
In a video sent to Columbia Gorge News, Valarie Rector, vice president of the D21 EA, shared that those affected by the clerical error were mainly employees who had opted for plans higher than the basic dental and vision insurance packages.
“So, the first issue is that all of last year, they put in the wrong dollar amounts for some people,” Rector said, “they overcharged you [employees].”
According to Rector, rather than paying an extra $10-$20 a month for higher coverage insurance packages, employees were paying as much as $50 a month over the course of the last school year, with the ultimate cumulative cost believed to be approximately $200,000.
According to both Rector and the joint statement, the grievance hearing ultimately ended with the agreement that the district would reimburse all employees who were overcharged, with the reimbursements ranging from $0 (for those who were unaffected by the mistake) to the highest amount of $861. Reimbursement will be issued in August.
“Randy [Anderson, district chief financial officer] has had to do oodles of work, he had to go through every single person, see what they had signed up for, see how much actually was taken out of their paychecks, he compiled lists for everybody …” Rector said.
Rector did want it noted that employees did have insurance during the last school year, “Everybody got the coverage that [they] were supposed to have, [they] were just charged the wrong amount for it.”
With the grievance being settled with the resolution that the district will be reimbursing the effected employees, the tentative bargaining agreement between the district and unions is still in question, as the discovered error ultimately revealed the agreed upon insurance costs were based on the incorrect numbers from the 2023-24 school year.
According to the unions in a document shared with Columbia Gorge News, the reimbursements made by the district may be taken out of the district’s current Health Reimbursement Arrangement [HRA] account funds.
HRAs, according to Oregon.gov, “allow employers to contribute pre-tax funds to help employees pay for medical expenses.”
Due to clerical changes in district employee insurance processes, according to Rector, Estimates of Billing [EOB], which were formally manually submitted by district employees for reimbursement, will now be automatically submitted, resulting in 100% utilization. The district and unions tentatively agreed on a higher rate to cover the cost of increased claims. If the reimbursements are made next month out of the account, the HRA fund would be approximately $200,000 less than anticipated to cover claims for the upcoming school year.
“So for us starting the year … that’s problematic,” Rector said, “the district has to cover those, they are contractually obligated to cover those, which means it’ll come out of the general fund … if [the HRA fund] gets spent.”
While no formal proposals have been made or agreed to, according to Rector and the union document, ideas verbally suggested by the district to recoup the loss include potentially increasing insurance premiums or raising the current deductible coverage, or keeping premium costs as they are but changing to a less desirable health plan.
“Once again ... they are going to be asking us to help fix this mistake,” Rector said.
Currently, union representatives are consulting with their members on the next steps of the process, and whether to continue with the current tentative agreement or ask to reopen bargaining. According to the union document, they will keep meeting with district administration to discuss the issues.
Columbia Gorge News reached out to the district for comment. “While we never want these situations to occur, we are grateful that Mr. Anderson was able to catch this error and work quickly to correct the issue,” Stephanie Bowen, district communications director said in an email, “We are thankful that we were able to come to a quick resolution with our union teams and continue the process of finalizing our collective bargaining agreements.”
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