ST. PAUL — Amid soaring insurance premiums, relief may be on the horizon for Minnesota public school employees in the coming years through a proposed statewide insurance pool.
Educators are calling on the Legislature to establish the pool, saying they are forced to delay health care, choose between livable salaries and affordable coverage, or, in some cases, to forego care entirely.
Rising health care costs are stressing K-12 teachers whose pay is already estimated to lag similarly educated professionals by more than 30%, according to a 2025 Department of Education study.
Grouping health care coverage would lower districts' administrative costs and give them more power to negotiate with large insurance companies, said bill’s author Rep. Liz Reyer, DFL-Eagan.
Lori Goff, a special education paraprofessional in the St. Michael-Albertville School District, testified in support of the bill at a February House committee meeting. Her son has a rare eye disease, and Goff said she can’t afford to pay for treatment that would stabilize the condition.
Instead, she said, her son uses a medication typically given to children with cancer awaiting a bone marrow transplant.
“It suppresses the immune system and has possibly devastating and irreversible long-term side effects,” Goff said.
Though significantly cheaper than the other treatment, the medication is still not covered by insurance, and Goff said she works three jobs to pay for it.
“My son may still lose his sight,” Goff said. “Imagine telling your child that you can't afford to keep them healthy.”
The pool would cover all public schools and their employees, including paraprofessionals such as Goff.
Reyer is seeking to pass a related measure this session to begin collecting data on the pool's costs, with plans to bring the full proposal forward again next year. Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, is sponsoring an identical bill in the Senate.
The bill was brought to Reyer by Education Minnesota on behalf of more than 84,000 K-12 school employees statewide, said Monica Byron, the union's president.
Currently, each district manages its own contracts and absorbs cost increases when employees need expensive care. The pool would bring stability to districts in greater Minnesota, where a single serious illness or accident can significantly raise a district's overall cost of care, Byron said.
Kunesh said the pool would help promote teacher retention, a persistent challenge for many districts.
After insurance premiums rose 22% in Anoka-Hennepin, the district narrowly avoided a teachers' strike in January, Byron said. The Kasson-Mantorville School District has seen an average 11% annual increase in insurance premiums in the past six years, said educator Aaron Wilkie at the February House committee meeting.
Not everyone supports the proposal. At the February House committee meeting, Todd Mensink testified on behalf of multiple organizations, including the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. He said that decisions around healthcare are best made locally and the bill would not make a huge difference in administrative costs, with increases for some districts and reductions for others.
The teachers’ union Education Minnesota has been working to address these concerns, Byron said. Districts would receive funding for the difference between current premium costs and the costs under the pool, Reyer said.
“They're afraid of getting hit with something they don't know how they're going to pay for,” Reyer said. “They're like, ‘Oh, but we lose a bargaining tool.’ It's like, you shouldn't be bargaining with people's ability to get their healthcare. That's wrong.”
In an evenly divided House, the proposal has garnered bipartisan support. Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, is a co-author of the House bill, Reyer said.
“People out in greater Minnesota know that their school districts are really struggling and that health insurance costs are just absolutely clobbering them,” Reyer said. “It's not hitting a lot of ideological barriers.”
If the data-collection bill passes this session, Reyer said she plans to bring the full proposal forward in 2027. With less than a month left in the session, it remains unclear whether lawmakers will proceed. Kunesh said she remains hopeful.
“If we have an opportunity to make things better for these folks, I think we are, you know, really obliged to do that,” Kunesh said.
Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news across the state.
