AUBURN — After three failed mediation sessions and a year without a contract, Auburn teachers and the school system are going to fact-finding in an attempt to break their impasse.

At issue: whether the school system should keep paying for health insurance for teachers’ spouses.

The school system says no. It wants to drop the coverage for teachers’ husbands and wives. In return, it has offered to cover 100 percent of insurance premiums for teachers and their children and to boost teacher salaries by a total of $800,000, the amount it expects to save by dropping insurance for spouses. It has also offered to pay $200 a month to teachers who don’t take health insurance. 

School Committee Chairman David Das said the change would allow the school system to better deal with its budget year to year because it would have one less group to worry about when it comes to insurance’s unpredictable annual increases.  

“We’re looking for real structural change here,” Das said.

The Auburn Education Association has balked at the school system’s proposal, saying it has repeatedly given up greater salaries in favor of better benefits and dropping insurance coverage would feel like a step backward. The union said the change would hurt several teachers whose spouses are seriously ill and who rely on the school system’s health insurance. It said half of its teachers would lose money under the school system’s proposal, even as the other half would gain.

“You wind up with the haves and the have-nots,” said union President Timothy Wegmann. “We represent all people.”

Wegmann said the union isn’t completely opposed to dropping spouses from health insurance and is willing to negotiate the issue. It wants more money to compensate teachers for the change. 

Auburn currently pays 95 percent of teachers’ health insurance. It pays 93 percent for teachers and their children and 90 percent for teachers and their spouses or teachers and their families.   

The teachers’ three-year contract ended in August 2008. The two sides have been negotiating since the fall of 2007. Although they have many issues still to resolve, including how many years this latest contract will cover, health insurance is the most contentious issue. Three recent mediation sessions have failed to bring a resolution.

The school system and union will now bring their issues to a three-person fact-finding committee in an attempt to break the impasse. They are expected to go before the committee in a couple of months and likely will receive the committee’s report a month or so after that. 

Teachers are not the only ones working without a contract in Auburn’s schools. The contract for secretaries and education technicians also expired in August 2008. Food service workers are looking to negotiate their first contract. 

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