By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — A week after hearing the administration’s proposal for a 4.69 percent increase in next year’s school budget, the Board of Education has learned that projected health insurance costs are not certain.

Though not the staggering 45 percent increase projected last year before the district switched back to the state’s Partnership Plan, school officials learned after a day-long budget workshop Jan. 3 that insurance could cost the district as much as 12 percent more in 2025-26, not the 4 percent — or $1 million increase — built into the proposed budget.

Each additional percent would amount to about $200,000, Elio Longo, the school district’s chief financial officer, told the school board at a meeting last Thursday at Staples High School.

Although factors other than the annual rate increase tend to lower Longo’s budgeted projection, he told the board he was not currently confident about what impact insurance costs will have on the bottom line.

“I remain hopeful that … the final rate set will be more favorable,” Longo said.

“So the headline is, ‘We don’t know,’ ” responded board Chair Lee Goldstein.

Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice’s proposed bottom line for the 2025-26 fiscal year is $150.3 million. Of that, health insurance costs comprise $22.1 million

The school board is to meet weekly this month to dissect the recommended budget before endorsing a spending plan and sending it to town funding bodies next month.

The health insurance discussion, led by Longo and Jillian Ritter, a vice president at Lockton Companies LLC, the district’s insurance consultant, takes place annually to give the board an overview of claims experience and projections for both medical and dental costs.

Early guidance from Lockton was that the district could expect an 8.3 percent increase in medical premiums and a 5 percent rise for dental, which is provided through Delta Dental, not the state partnership.

That is what Longo used to build his projected 4 percent budget increase for insurance, which also factors in Teacher Retirement Plan credits as well as what Longo called a right-sizing of the district’s $2.5 million Internal Service Fund, which was maintained should the district return to self-insurance. A $1 million shift of the fund to the operating side of the ledger, Longo insisted, will not result in supplanting operating funds. 

Longo said Lockton revised its initial projections from 8.3 percent to as much as 12 percent after receiving revised guidance from the Office of the State Comptroller.

The projection estimates an 8 to 10 percent increase, plus a 2 percent Fairfield County regional rate adjustment.

Longo expects more state guidance on Jan. 20, but said final rates will not be set until March “Hopefully the final rate will be more favorable,” he said.

Scarice said he hopes the projected rate is a worst-case scenario.

Historically, Ritter told the board that annual State Partnership rate increase have been in the single digits.

Jeff Hammer and Rich Hightower, both Board of Finance members, listened in on the discussion and eventually joined the table to ask questions.

Hightower asked who is consulted at the state to determine a comfortable insurance reserve. The state comptroller’s office, he was told.

Hammer wondered how the claims history correlates to the rate increase projected by the state.

Ritter said she doesn’t know, but said it is beneficial to partnership participants when initial estimates end up higher than actual costs and they end up coming out ahead.

She added the school district is much better off this year than had it continued with a private insurer.

The district must stay in the plan three years to avoid a cost penalty.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.