PCTA Summer ACTION

Volume I, Issue 4                   June 26 , 2009

Attention PCTA Members!

Thank you for spreading the word about Summer Action! We are getting more e-mail addresses each week. Please continue helping us make every effort to keep members up-to-date on PCTA and Pinellas County Schools activities during the summer. Let PCTA members know about the Summer Action electronic newsletter. They can sign up by calling PCTA at (727)585-6518 or by e-mail to robin.haines@floridaea.org. They can also access the Summer Action from the PCTA-PESPA homepage at our website http://www.pcta-pespa.org/. The link can be found in the column on the left side of the homepage.

School Board Approves Humana for Health Insurance Provider

The Pinellas County School Board has approved Humana to provide medical, dental and vision insurance for the 2010 and 2011 calendar years. Humana was the recommendation of the Employee Well-Being & Satisfaction Bargaining Subcommittee after analyzing bid proposals from five health insurance companies.

The Humana health plan closely matches Aetna's health benefits. There may be some disruption in patient physician relationships but Humana's comparison of physician utilization under Aetna to the Humana HMO Select Network was a 94% match. Humana has agreed to recruit those physicians who are not in their network and have high utilization from PCS employees.

The current budget model allows for the board to continue the 80%/20% premium split (actually 81%/19%).  Despite Humana being the lowest bid, medical payroll deduction amounts for most plans will increase beginning December, 2009 for January 1, 2010 coverage. Humana will also offer a new plan where there will be an actual reduction in premium. Note: Pinellas is one of only a few school districts that pay part of the cost of family coverage for their employees!

Payroll deduction increases (per pay period) will be as follows:

Tier/Plan                    PCA                 HMO               POS

Employee                  $2.00               $2.00               $5.00

Employee + 1            $6.00               $6.00               $14.00

Family                       $11.00             $11.00             $33.00

Two Board Family        $6.00               $6.00               $28.00

Humana will also offer a reduced premium Staff HMO plan with the same plan design as the basic HMO but with a limited network. Employees who select this plan will see a reduction in payroll deduction costs from the current Basic HMO rates.

There are also plan design changes from 2010. They are as follows:

HMO Plan -

• Specialist co-pay from $35 to $40.
• Inpatient co-pay from $700 to $300 per day, maximum of 3 days.
• ER co-pay from $200 to $250.

POS Plan -

• Specialist co-pay from $35 to $40.
• ER co-pay from $150 to $250.

Both Humana and MetLife will continue offering their group dental plans with no changes in benefits or premiums for 2010. Beginning in January 2010, Humana will also offer the group vision plan formerly offered through Eye Med. This change provided significant savings for the health insurance package. The premium cost which is mostly borne by the school board will be approximately the same as 2009 and there is one major benefit difference. The current frame allowance of one frame every 12 months will change to one frame every 24 months. Note: Humana's plan mainly uses independent providers instead of retail providers such as JC Penney, Sears, Target, LensCrafters, and Pearle Vision.

Let's Communicate!

PCTA is developing a Task Force on Communications/Publications for the upcoming school year.  Upon recommendation from the Faculty Representative Council and the Executive Board, this task force would be in partnership with Goal Team 5 of the PCTA Strategic Plan.  If you are interested in serving on this important team for the 2009-10 school year, please contact PCTA President Kim Black at your earliest convenience.  (kim.black@floridaea.org)

Support Placement Fair

On June 23, 2009, Pinellas County Schools held its Support Professionals Placement Fair for the second time in two weeks.  There were 187 invitations sent to employees to attend the fair and out of that number, 119 actually conferred with district personnel.  Throughout the day, 108 employees were placed in various support positions.  

For those employees that did not attend, there were 66 calls made as an attempt to contact and place them.  According to support personnel, several support professionals are still on leave and one person resigned. 

For any support person that didn't accept a position at this time or by July 1, they will be put on PENDING PLACEMENT for 90 days (September 29, 2009).  After the Pending Placement timeline, employees will retain recall rights through June 30, 2010.  Throughout the 2009-2010 school year, attempts will be made to restore employees to, or close to, their original pay grade prior to this redirection. 

"My goal was to treat everyone with respect as they went through this trying time", said Marilyn Lusher, Director of Human Resources.  "We wanted to place as many employees as we could

 MARK YOUR CALENDAR

           June 29, 2009                         ESOL Workshop @ PCTA                                                3:00 PM

           July 1 - 7, 2009                       NEA Conventions, San Diego          

           August 22, 2009                     FR/AR School of Instruction                         Harborview Center