Horrors: WI Collective bargaining reforms saving school districts up to $1.3 million

Remember how the radical-left protested months ago about the collective bargaining law which was recently passed in Wisconsin.  It was going to gut or end education, Wisconsin was declaring war on our children and worse.  14 Democrat Senators fled to Illinois to prevent a vote on this measure.  Well now the law is in effect and so far the results are great for taxpayers, teachers and students.

The Hartland-Lakeside School District, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee in tiny Hartland, Wis., had a problem in its collective bargaining contract with the local teachers union.
The contract required the school district to purchase health insurance from a company called WEA Trust. The creation of Wisconsin's largest teachers union -- "WEA" stands for Wisconsin Education Association -- WEA Trust made money when union officials used collective bargaining agreements to steer profitable business its way.
The problem for Hartland-Lakeside was that WEA Trust was charging significantly higher rates than the school district could find on the open market. School officials knew that because they got a better deal from United HealthCare for coverage of nonunion employees. On more than one occasion, Superintendent Glenn Schilling asked WEA Trust why the rates were so high. "I could never get a definitive answer on that," says Schilling.
Changing to a different insurance company would save Hartland-Lakeside hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on key educational priorities -- especially important since the cash-strapped state government was cutting back on education funding. But teachers union officials wouldn't allow it; the WEA Trust requirement was in the contract, and union leaders refused to let Hartland-Lakeside off the hook.
That's where Wisconsin's new budget law came in. The law, bitterly opposed by organized labor in the state and across the nation, limits the collective bargaining powers of some public employees. And it just happens that the Hartland-Lakeside teachers' collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30. So now, freed from the expensive WEA Trust deal, the school district has changed insurers.

 It gets better:

Now, with the collective bargaining agreement gone, Schilling looks forward to working more closely with teachers. "I would say the biggest change is we have a lot more involvement with a wider scope of teachers," he says. When collective bargaining was in effect, "We dealt with a select team of teachers, a small group of three or four who were on the bargaining team, and then the union director. Any information that went to the teachers went through them. Now, we feel that we will have a direct dialogue."

And finally - the money saving can not be dismissed:

Hartland-Lakeside isn't the only school district that is pulling free from collective bargaining agreements that mandated WEA Trust coverage. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Pewaukee School District, not far from Hartland-Lakeside, will save $378,000 by next year by leaving WEA Trust. The Menomonee Falls School District, farther north, will reportedly save $1.3 million. Facing state cutbacks, the districts can't afford to overpay for union-affiliated coverage.
Look for the unions to fight back with everything they have. If the Wisconsin situation has shown anything, it is that organized labor views the collective bargaining fight as a life-or-death struggle. If the unions lose in Wisconsin, the clamor for change could spread to other states. What happened in Hartland-Lakeside could become a model for other schools looking for new and better ways to do business.

 Read the entire article here.