MCPS has a $40 million deficit in its Employee Benefit Plan (EBP)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a mid 40’s teacher I see mainly older teachers now. Not enough young healthy staff to offset the expense us older staff. Definitely a lot of deferred health problems and treatments this year for me. Loads of staff out for longer lengths of time. Many should retire but can’t due to golden handcuffs.

I know of at least one admin on wegovy. They have been in and out of the hospital and in and out of leave due to major health issues. Definitely not a beauty based weight loss reason as some might infer here. People are just getting older and run into major life problems. All these modern miracles in medicine are expensive.

+1. Older workforce along with deferred healthcare treatments from during the pandemic, paired with inflation cost and shortages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t McKnight already propose an 8% cut to central office?

Maybe but she also increased the number of jobs there by over 30% since she took over

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So we think the shortfall was caused by weight loss drugs and not the $13.7 million in settlements and judgments that MCPS has had to pay out since the budget year started?

Nobody actually believes that but McPS is wasting our tax $ pushing that narrative

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised that given we have so many teachers on this forum and that MCPS has implemented a spending freeze because of this deficit, that more teachers aren't concerned by this news.

Someone needs to do a serious line by line audit of both MCPS and the county and cut out all the wasteful spending. They get plenty of money and need to manage it better. Enough is enough.

I would focus on healthcare benefits- obscene, Cadillac healthcare

This is a double-edged sword, though. For a number of teachers, the good health benefits at low cost are the ONLY thing keeping people in their jobs, not wanting to lose it for themselves and their families by leaving. If that goes away, I promise you the staffing crisis will get worse. The conditions and pay are already driving people out, or at least failing to retain them; wrecking the benefits will accelerate that. The staff that are staying to keep those will feel free to bail. I'm a recent cancer survivor (at the grand old age of 36) and feel handcuffed to my job by my health insurance. If that changes, suddenly it doesn't seem so daunting to look at what other positions might make me happier with my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a mid 40’s teacher I see mainly older teachers now. Not enough young healthy staff to offset the expense us older staff. Definitely a lot of deferred health problems and treatments this year for me. Loads of staff out for longer lengths of time. Many should retire but can’t due to golden handcuffs.

I know of at least one admin on wegovy. They have been in and out of the hospital and in and out of leave due to major health issues. Definitely not a beauty based weight loss reason as some might infer here. People are just getting older and run into major life problems. All these modern miracles in medicine are expensive.

+1. Older workforce along with deferred healthcare treatments from during the pandemic, paired with inflation cost and shortages.

The true test will be do other school districts/government agencies have multi million dollar deficits or did someone at MCPS do a terrible job setting premiums? Inflation and aging are predictable. Increased healthcare use is not going to be unique to MCPS.

[Anonymous]

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/schools-insurance-costs-are-soaring-and-climate-change-isnt-the-only-reason/2023/06

https://www.mercer.com/en-us/insights/us-health-news/health-benefit-cost-expected-to-rise-54-in-2024-mercer-survey/#:~:text=US%20employers%20expect%20total%20health,Employer%2DSponsored%20Health%20Plans%202023.

https://hrexecutive.com/employer-health-benefit-costs-to-soar-again-in-2024-why/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.edweek.org/leadership/schools-insurance-costs-are-soaring-and-climate-change-isnt-the-only-reason/2023/06

https://www.mercer.com/en-us/insights/us-health-news/health-benefit-cost-expected-to-rise-54-in-2024-mercer-survey/#:~:text=US%20employers%20expect%20total%20health,Employer%2DSponsored%20Health%20Plans%202023.

https://hrexecutive.com/employer-health-benefit-costs-to-soar-again-in-2024-why/

Seems like this was entirely predictable. MCPS just didn't. The legal losses seem like a more likely explanation for the budget freeze.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hope McKnight gets fired but she is not the cause of this particular issue which is about inflation and increased health care claims including for Ozempic and Wegovy which are ver expensive and very popular.

What?? Who approved covering Ozempic and Wegovy? Do they cover breast reduction too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Today in the fiscal management meeting, they went into some pretty alarming details about where MCPS stands fiscally:

Apparently, the Employee Benefit Plan (EBP) fund balance has a $40 million deficit. This deficit is directly related to the spending freeze that's currently in place and why MCPS is looking to charge for summer school and transportation going forward.

Wonderful. Another reason to get rid of Dr. McKnight. She is a 360 degree disaster.

How exactly is this her fault? Not to mention the finance team has been bringing awareness about the potential flags for awhile(such as higher healthcare cost and more people acquiring them likely from things that got put off during the pandemic. Also they were very vocal about the fact the major cuts were going to be needed for FY2024 given that we’re forced to deplete the standing fund balance, ESSR funds were going a way, and inflation, while lower still had prices overall higher.

And now upon seeing the latest project they input expenditure freezes. What exactly do you expect them to do?

I mean I guess last year they could have cut another 70-100M from the budget, but not sure anyone would have been happy about that either.

I think Monifa didn't help by obligating MCPS to pay in full for all AP/IB exams for starters. I'm sure that had a significant effect on expenditures for the county.

The school should pay for those exams and other things. They should not be giving away money to non-profits, etc.

The lawsuits, consultants, expensive and unnecessary vendor relationships, bloated central office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope McKnight gets fired but she is not the cause of this particular issue which is about inflation and increased health care claims including for Ozempic and Wegovy which are ver expensive and very popular.

What?? Who approved covering Ozempic and Wegovy? Do they cover breast reduction too?

Feel free to ask Cigna as they are the provider. Which MCPS changed to in order to save $10M in Administrative cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a mid 40’s teacher I see mainly older teachers now. Not enough young healthy staff to offset the expense us older staff. Definitely a lot of deferred health problems and treatments this year for me. Loads of staff out for longer lengths of time. Many should retire but can’t due to golden handcuffs.

I know of at least one admin on wegovy. They have been in and out of the hospital and in and out of leave due to major health issues. Definitely not a beauty based weight loss reason as some might infer here. People are just getting older and run into major life problems. All these modern miracles in medicine are expensive.

+1. Older workforce along with deferred healthcare treatments from during the pandemic, paired with inflation cost and shortages.

+100 We work so many hours, we put ourselves and our health last in our priorities - a mistake that I have made.

[Anonymous]

They need to cut all the central office pcc jobs. Most of those people work from home when they are supposed to be in school supporting families. So many new unnecessary central office jobs. Make the social workers at rocking horse school based or get rid of them. Its easy for people to tell one school they are at another, when they are actually at home. Achievement Specialist, cut. We downgraded to Cigna so that other central office jobs could be retained/created. Cut those jobs and our deficit goes down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a mid 40’s teacher I see mainly older teachers now. Not enough young healthy staff to offset the expense us older staff. Definitely a lot of deferred health problems and treatments this year for me. Loads of staff out for longer lengths of time. Many should retire but can’t due to golden handcuffs.

I know of at least one admin on wegovy. They have been in and out of the hospital and in and out of leave due to major health issues. Definitely not a beauty based weight loss reason as some might infer here. People are just getting older and run into major life problems. All these modern miracles in medicine are expensive.

+1. Older workforce along with deferred healthcare treatments from during the pandemic, paired with inflation cost and shortages.

+100 We work so many hours, we put ourselves and our health last in our priorities - a mistake that I have made.

This issue is not specific to MoCo. Unless all the school districts vastly underestimated premiums, somebody messed up and now it is going to cost taxpayers and/or future employees a lot money.

[Anonymous]

They should look into prorating the health insurance costs of part time employees. Currently, as long as an employees works 50%, they receive full healthcare benefits. It would seem that an easy way to cut money is for the county to only pay the percentage that the employee is working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a mid 40’s teacher I see mainly older teachers now. Not enough young healthy staff to offset the expense us older staff. Definitely a lot of deferred health problems and treatments this year for me. Loads of staff out for longer lengths of time. Many should retire but can’t due to golden handcuffs.

I know of at least one admin on wegovy. They have been in and out of the hospital and in and out of leave due to major health issues. Definitely not a beauty based weight loss reason as some might infer here. People are just getting older and run into major life problems. All these modern miracles in medicine are expensive.

+1. Older workforce along with deferred healthcare treatments from during the pandemic, paired with inflation cost and shortages.

+100 We work so many hours, we put ourselves and our health last in our priorities - a mistake that I have made.

This issue is not specific to MoCo. Unless all the school districts vastly underestimated premiums, somebody messed up and now it is going to cost taxpayers and/or future employees a lot money.

Correct. We should look to see PG County Public Schools, Howard County Public Schools and Frederick County Public Schools have similarly sized EBP deficits if this is just due to inflation and increased healthcare costs.

If they don’t, then you know someone at MCPS messed up.