microphone test for special school board meeting March 26th 2025 good afternoon the time is now 4:00 the Visetta Public Schools Board of Education special regular meeting for Wednesday March 26th 2025 please will
please come to order will the clerk please call the role heidi Kedar is absent sheila Prior here sarah Johansson absent paris Bend is absent valentina Ays here dan Janestra
here milan Sahony present chase Anderson here thank you looks like we have a quorum all right thanks to my board colleagues who were able to take time out of their busy schedules and come here for this special meeting uh there is no consent agenda for this
meeting but the next item on the on our agenda is the approval of the agenda the recommended action is to approve the agenda is there a motion so moved i second okay moved and second valentina
can second second okay thank you moved and seconded will the clerk click please take a roll call vote paris Bendy is absent sheila Prior yes heidi Kedar absent valentina Ays yes dan
Janestra yes sarah Johansson is absent milan Sahonyi yes we have an agenda thank you Sheila the only item on the agenda is the approval of health and dental insurance as recommended by the insurance committee the recommendations
will be made by human resources benefits manager Joanne Fields joanne are we going to vote on them separately i believe yes thank you go ahead i might just make a couple of introductory comments if I may first of all to welcome
and today uh Mr chair and members of the board we do have those two agenda items to today for you to take action on the first one in regard to the health insurance uh plan rates for the 2526 school year and also the dental
insurance plan rates for the 2526 school year so Joanne is here as a member of the human resources department and a person who's been very closely connected to uh benefits for many years uh here in the district uh she'll share a little bit about uh the committee work all that
led up to uh these uh proposals for uh rates for both health and dental uh insurance for uh the upcoming school year and will provide us with uh some great background and and uh understanding in regard to the process
and and the result and uh ultimately the recommendations so Joanne thank you so much for being here uh today to present the information and uh with that I'll turn it over to you thank you thank you Superintendent Anderson and board members for coming today um I know
this is a special meeting and I appreciate your attendance day but the timeliness of this happens every year and the reason that happens is because we have to wait until we have the most amount of our claims information through March in order to actually go out for bid and to look at our percentages
coverage so that's why it happens every year at this kind of a timeline i did prepare a few slides that you can reference and I will talk through them just um briefly um just in case you didn't know we are a self-insured or a self-funded plan and our district has been that way since
2000 so what self-funded means you can look at the bullets there is that we're really responsible as the employer to pay for the claims um and take the risk of those claims as they fluctuate throughout the year and then purchase a
stop-loss coverage to help us cap that risk so we kind of go back and forth in managing our own plan we're able to set our premiums we're able to uh add and drop pieces to the plan that best reflect our employees and our usage so
it has been highly beneficial to have us um stay self-insured and is something that I can't imagine changing in the foreseeable future again pending what happens um throughout the world so that's just a quick summary of why we're self-insured um the health insurance
that we're looking at today i also want to highlight our insurance committee we have an extremely dedicated group of individuals and you'll see on the slide as well the representation from all of the groups but I do want to highlight them they are also on the recommendation but I'd like to just recognize them by
their names we have five representatives from the teacher group ann Nommen Linda Langford Dave Schultz Donna Nelson and Rachel Falcowski our clerical representative was Denine Usgard our custodial was Ron Rogers our principles was represented by Ashley Paul our
Weisetta kids program by Jessica Sorenson the Weisetta Cafe by Claire Nielson our unaffiliated group was Leslie Myron and finance um David Daskcovich and Scottless both um participated in our group as well as of course myself and then most recently
consulting of course um with Annie Dodie who is our interim um executive director as well so this group of people are volunteers and they come to our meetings and we um definitely do a deep dive of the information that I'm going to highlight for you today um we also
benefit greatly from our consultant and their team um the consultant meets with us and helps us prepare all of our data um and has a great knowledge of self-funded plans and also works with many school districts um that are also self-funded
so the reason we got to today and our first recommendation of our health insurance is because every two years we have to go through HIDA and HIA is the health insurance transparency act and I reference reference the statute as well there we must do that every two years
due to being self-funded our RFP process began in January and we got our first bids in February the committee then looks at those first bids um we did get three offers we had two others who declined to quote for us so the
committee reviewed those three first offers and then made the request for two of them to come back and submit their best and final offer and that was due March 13th and then last evening March 25th the committee went through those best and final offers um and unanimously
recommend staying with United Healthcare with no plan changes so that is the first piece of our recommendation again when I say no plan changes that means no changes to our deductibles no changes to our out- of-pockets co-pays keeping everything um the same as far as
actually the plan information and the plan company so that's the first part of the recommendation the second part is the um percent increase so these slides this slide has a lot more information on it but what the insurance committee does is
take a deep dive again into the self-funded plan and looking at three years of data of our claims data for both medical and pharmacy and then we decide we're very mindful of our reserves because being self-funded we have to keep a reserve balance in case a
plan were to end and then also in case that we had a huge increase in claims the average increase and I'm really proud of this committee and this group that's been in existence for a long time um we have over 23 years the
annual or the average increase is 4.66% that's extremely unheard of um that's a very low percent average to keep for health insurance if you look at groceries today and eggs and the price and how everything is going up to be able to stay there is um pretty amazing
and we also have been looking at medical trend and in Minnesota this year that's between 13 to 15% of an increase and our surrounding districts we also um do a lot of research on what other districts are doing um that are in the same boat as us and their averages are 10 to 15%
this year we haven't hit double digits and I've been knocking on wood a lot um yet so we're very pleased that we can stay below that and continue at the 7% and it was a unanimous decision also a recommendation by the committee last evening that 7% be our overall
recommendation for health insurance i'll move to the second recommendation um that's also on your agenda this evening and that's dental and the district's dental insurance is through Delta Dental of Minnesota our dental is also based on claim experience but it doesn't have the same or as many
variables as health insurance and also doesn't have the HIDA or statute to follow we just always go through every year look at claims um and try to make a fair recommendation for both the district budget balancing and for employees cost so we've maintained a 2%
average in that over the past 23 years um and again this year we also would like to recommend a 2% increase for our active employees and again this does follow um trend and keeps a sound fund balance for the dental plan and just in closing just as a little summary for a
brief little bit more information we also have our life insurance and long-term disability plans we also offer a voluntary vision coverage for eyewear and then we have critical illness hospital care accidental injury and supplemental life that we offer as optional plans and all of those rates
are locked in until June of 2027 so we did not have to review or redo any of those so again it's my um privilege today to be here to recommend these numbers that I feel good about and representing the district after meeting even with Superintendent Anderson again the finance team um to just kind of
review where we're at and I feel um quite comfortable in presenting the opportunity for us to stay with United Healthcare and go to 7% and then also to do a 2% for dental and I welcome any questions thank you Joanne i was going to say suggest that we pause for a second and see if there are any
questions or comments from our colleagues no okay i have a couple simple ones uh can you explain what stop-loss means for those of us who have no idea what what that is sure in kind of in simple terms it basically means because we're
self-insured that we have to protect our risk um so we basically buy coverage kind of for each person um and it protects or stops our losses for anyone that might have a catastrophic event so there's a cap amount that we hit before
insurance will come in and cover their additional amount up to that stop okay and you you mentioned 10 to 15% of neighboring districts so how many of them are self-insured versus Yeah I only did the numbers i only looked at self-insured um individuals for the
market right now and like for example um I can tell you a couple of them eden Prairie is looking at 11% plus um Edina had 20% for this calendar year um Rosemont is looking at 15 to 18 Elk River 12 to 13 and again these are
numbers they get and then they also can lower that by making plan design changes such as the deductible and out of pocket and we did that a couple years ago we had to make some major changes to that um to remain more competitive and keep that amount going so I know all of these
people are in the same boat as we are the way they look at those numbers as well okay all right thank you go ahead uh question I have is you mentioned about reserve balance i'm curious if you can tell what what is
reserve balance as if today what the number is or what it what it means uh what the number is I don't have that right in front of me do you by chance have that i don't but I can tell you it's right around I think three and a half million
that's right followup for sure mhm and in terms of when we look at fund balance we look at operations for 2 months 3 months so in terms of number of months how much how does that translate how much is 2 and a.5 million enough for for
our year our plan year one year okay all right good thank you um and then so um you know really a big thank you for being here um you know I really have enjoyed your presentation and I um you know uh am grateful for the
information you've offered us it certainly informs us in our decisions very well um I wanted to understand just a little bit more when you talk about four and you know 2/3% um about you know our cost staying lower than other districts just you've touched on it a little bit but just kind of you
know factors leading us to you know keeping those costs down you know relative to other districts sure i think if I understand what you're saying what we do again is we the committee and again it's a very active very dedicated committee look at how is our plan running where are the claims
coming from because what it what causes this increase is our claims so if we have a lot of babies in the district which is our business obviously but if they're premature and have longer hospital stays or if we have individuals with a unfortunate diagnosis of a cancer
those are higher claims and we can't control those um but that is what drives our big numbers and pharmacy drives our numbers so what we'll review is under the pharmacy plan we'll look at okay what is our co-pay for your generic drugs what is your co-pay for a
specialty drugs because specialty drugs on the market are very expensive and they're doing a lot of bio similar drugs things that are really causing those to go up a lot even though there's a new I'm excited that we're looking at a new international costing option that's just become available so we will be able to
offer some things people have to buy in like accept it they don't have to pay anything but they have to voluntarily accept it to get those lower cost international drugs so we look at that we look again at co-pays we look at where people are going we have a different network for ourarmacies we
have preferred networks and non-preferred networks because two of the major pharmacy providers if we go there for let's say a month of pills the employee might have to pay $10 but the plan has to pay $300 for those 30 pills if they go to one of the big providers
they still the employee might only pay $10 but because they're going to that non-preferred pharmacy that we might have to pay $2,000 for those same 30 pills so those all those pieces that we keep trying to educate members about where to go try this try to save costs
um if you can you know we try to educate and add those little pieces to the plan glp1s which are the big weight loss meds which you see on TV all the time we'll go over those are all really expensive medications so we really want to make sure our plan is sound and they're not
offered for anybody just because they say they want them we want to make sure that they're medically necessary and that the doctors are ensuring that it's a medication they can they should and can be on so it's affordable for us as well does that make sense does that help Dan yes it does thank you so much
all right thank you Joan um there are no more questions you can proceed with the recommendations and then take a vote okay um if the first one is the uh admit authorization of health and hospitalization insurance rates for
2526 I'm just not sure does it need to be read or how if you would or I can do it for you what do you prefer i'll have you read it all right I'll take care of that for you so as part of the required health insurance transparency act RFP process the insurance committee recommends the district accept the
United Healthcare offer for administration and stop loss and also the clear script offer for pharmacy benefit administration for the 2526 contract year the insurance committee met throughout the plan year and completed a thorough review of the health insurance plans the consensus was
to go with an increase of 7% as has just been uh described with no plan changes to the deductibles and out-of- pocket maximum amounts uh Joanne has already uh referenced the individuals on the committee those names are also listed here in the board packet and um Mr mr
chair and members of the board the recommended action for this evening is to approve the recommendations of the insurance committee that the district selects United Healthcare on a self-insured basis for administration and stop loss accept the clear script pharmacy benefit offer and accept the 7%
rate renewal for the 2025 2026 health insurance plans thank you Dr anderson so board colleagues uh I'm going to read that recommended action again approve the recommendations of the insurance committee that the district select
United Healthcare on a self-insured basis for administration and stop-loss accept the clear script pharmacy benefit offer and accept the 7% rate in renewal for the 202526 health insurance plans is there a
motion so moved second moved and seconded is there a discussion yes Shiva thank you um thank you Joanne for that presentation uh I just wanted to say to my board colleagues that is
chair of the HR um school board committee um I got to hear the about the process um we got to hear about the insurance committee that weighed in on this and it's all been cleared by finance and you know there's a thank I
guess thank you for the um explanation as well about why it's coming to us now um meetings have the claims data up through March um and the HR committee um is supportive of passing this recommendation thank you anyone else
okay all right i'm going to read the recommendation again uh approve the recommendations of the insurance committee that the district select United Healthcare on a self-insured basis for administration and stop-loss accept the clear script pharmacy benefit
offer and accept the 7% rate renewal for the 202526 health insurance plans this will be a roll call vote dan Janestra yes sarah Johansson is
absent paris Bend is absent sheila Prior yes heidi Kedar is absent valentina Ays yes milan Sahonyi yes the motion passes thank you all right next Joanne will
recommend the dental insurance plan joan the administration is recommending an overall 2% increase in funding for our self-insured dental uh Delta dental plan and we are pleased to accomplish this without any plan design changes so Mr chair I'll turn it over to you to read
the recommended action you Dr anderson the recommended action board colleagues is to approve the recommendation that the district remain with Delta Dental on a self-insured basis and a rate renewal for the 202526
plan year is 2% overall is there a motion so move second moved and seconded thank you is there a discussion just want to say thank you very much for explanation i had some questions but you
covered everything and at the same time looks like you already looked at the pricing and all and employees will be covered if they will need and uh having ourselves experiencing some health um
issues it is very good to have health plan if you feel covered then you feel that your employer is taking care of you so looks like you're taking care of them very well thank you thank you that is again the overarching goal of our committee um is to really work hard with
all the union representation all the employee repres representation and they all have a voice um to share and I encourage them because we have you know 1500 employees on the plan um plus their families we want to make sure that they're getting the best plan that we can offer and be fiscally responsible
for the district as well yeah she as HR chair again um HR schoolboard committee chair I would just also like to again express my support of of approving this thank you all right okay again the recommended action is to approve the
recommendation that the district remain with Delta Dental on a self-insured basis and a rate renewal for the 25 202526 plan year is 2% overall uh this is a roll call vote heidi Kedar
is absent valentina Ays yes dan Janestra yes sarah Johansson is absent paris Bendy is absent sheila Prior yes milan Sahony yes the motion passes thank you i just want to acknowledge uh uh Director
Prior's role in the HR committee as chair so thank you and your committee for being diligent about this work so thanks again and thank you Joanne for all the work that you do as always we look forward to the next event i guess there's the retirement party right yes
okay thank you so much all right this concludes the Wisetta Public Schools special regular board meeting the time is now 4:22 is there a motion to adjourn i move second moved and seconded all in
favor say I i oppose nay the motion passes the Wisetta Public Schools Board of Education special regular meeting for Wednesday March 26th 2025 is adjourned