School Board OKs New Health Benefits

An attempt to limit school board members’ benefits brought the opposite result Tuesday night. The board voted instead to offer health insurance benefits to retiring trustees who have served 12 years or more.

That would be new ground for the 24-year-old Irvine Unified School District, which has never had a school board member reach the 12-year mark.

When President Mary Ellen Hadley steps down in November, however, she will have served 13 years. Trustee Margie Wakeham will also have 13 years if she serves until her term expires in November 1998.

School board members Hadley, Wakeham and Michael B. Regele voted in favor of the proposal, which will offer the departing trustees the opportunity to purchase health insurance from the self-insured district.

Trustees Tom Burnham and Hank Adler voted against the extension.

Adler also lost his bid to end health insurance coverage for future school board members. Irvine Unified trustees receive free health insurance coverage with the option of including family members for $75 a month.

In December, Burnham and Adler opposed the reinstatement of a $400-a-month stipend paid to school board members. The stipend had been cut to $100 a month in the aftermath of the county bankruptcy.

Counting the stipend and health insurance benefits, Adler said this week, each school board member is now entitled to $42,400 in total benefits for a four-year term. “I just believe that’s too much,” he said.

In regard to the health insurance, Regele said he fears that, without sufficient benefits, only the affluent will be able to serve.

“Increasingly, it is the ‘haves’ who are able to buy themselves into positions of leadership at various levels of our government,” Regele said. “I think that’s troubling.”