Garfield High School students walked out of school and marched to the district Board of Education on Tuesday morning in solidarity with their teachers to protest a move by the board and Superintendent Richard Tomko to switch the district’s state-provided health insurance to a private plan.
The school board — with the exception of one trustee, Allan Focarino — voted Monday night to adopt a resolution ending state-provided health insurance coverage that teachers, supervisors, principals and custodial staff members have used for decades.
The district switched to a private Aetna plan, giving employees less than five days’ notice and almost no details about how the new plan will work.
The board did not table, postpone or rescind the vote, as the teachers’ union has hoped, and informed union President Justin Serfozo of the change in the middle of a school week, he told NorthJersey.com.
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The Garfield Federation of Teachers is a chapter of the national AFT union, which represents public school teachers.
Many students, employees, the district’s mayor and deputy mayor, and former board members spoke at an emotional six-hour meeting that became a scene of impassioned pleas and furious outrage from teachers, supervisors and custodial workers, all of whom are affected by the change.
Supervisors, principals and maintenance staff members have their own unions, amounting to several hundreds of affected employees.
The school board voted to terminate the district’s enrollment in the State Health Benefits Plan provided through Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield and replace it with a private plan offered by Aetna.
The reason for the switch, said Tomko, the superintendent who joined the district last summer, was a projected annual saving of $800,000 in premiums.
The district says cheaper premiums justify the switch, but the affected employees were upset that the new plan will cut coverage and that, most importantly, they have not had a chance to review their options. They say the new plan was forced on them.
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Tomko informed union representatives of the change on Tuesday last week, at a meeting he called after school ended, Serfozo said, and provided no comprehensive comparison of benefits for the old and new plans.
The new insurance proposal needed to be pushed through in order to meet an April 1 deadline, Tomko told NorthJersey.com after the meeting.
Board attorney Curt Geisler ended the meeting without closing comments from trustees, after motions to adjourn made by two board members while members of the public were still speaking during the public comment period.
The district will not revert to the older health plan, Tomko told NorthJersey.com, though he would try to negotiate where there “was impact.”
Tomko tried to calm the crowd several times, saying the new plan is “identical” to the old one. The crowd responded with boos. One teacher speaking during public comment challenged Tomko’s position by reading from an email that said the new Aetna plan did “not match” portions of the State Health Benefits Plan.
The Aetna plan makes primary care providers “gatekeepers” who must provide referrals to specialists, the district’s physical therapist Michael Repasy told the board. The current plan gives its participants much broader coverage, he said.
“This was disrespectful and not done in good faith,” Serfozo told the board, noting that in his 20 years as a teacher in Garfield, he had never needed to address the board in this way.
“We’ve been blindsided,” said Michael Backo, a high school teacher.
One student asked the board, “Where’s the PowerPoint?” that would allow teachers to compare the new private plan with the older public plan.
About 30 outspoken students lined up at the meeting and came to their teachers’ defense during public comment, arguing that the savings came “on the backs of the teachers.”
“Five days. We got five days,” some people called out angrily, referring to Tomko’s informing union representatives on Tuesday of last week about the proposal.
The board also approved hiring around 22 new employees, most of them teachers or paraprofessionals for elementary classes. Among the non-teaching hires were an assistant district transportation supervisor at $98,000, two maintenance workers with a salary of around $84,820 each and a third maintenance person at $51,671.
Garfield Mayor Everett E. Garnto Jr. publicly criticized the hiring of the assistant district transportation supervisor, who is related to a city employee, accusing the district of cronyism.
The board took three recesses, each one without making a motion to leave the room during public comment period when members of the crowd shouted their disagreement with the vote.
“You degrade the process … the only thing you get from screaming is a viral moment,” Geisler, the board attorney, told the crowd.
The state plan provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield “has taken away the worry and loopholes that Aetna is infamous for,” fourth grade teacher Stacey DeVito told the board.
Her youngest son, Jack, who has congenital heart disease, had 13 surgeries, including “rebuilding his pectoral muscles because his chest has been cracked open so many times,” she said. The state plan has “taken the worry away … I tell you this story not for pity but for understanding and, just this time, a little compassion from this board,” she said.
