A court-ordered mediation to settle an ongoing dispute over health care between the Sacramento City Unified School District and the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) has been delayed by mutual consent because the district needs more time to prepare and bring staff in for the proceedings. The State Board of Education, which had ordered the mediation in the first place, allowed the delay.

The dispute centers on the health insurance options offered to the teachers in the Unified School District for 2015. The SCTA filed an unfair labor practices suit over the proposed healthcare options. The changes included eliminating options beginning in January of next year, with much more limited options. The Unified District countered that they are still offering several distinct choices in the form of Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health Plus, and Western Health Advantage HMO.

Particularly irksome to the teacher’s union was the removal of the popular Health Net option for healthcare coverage, and the fact that the changes were imposed without any input from the union. The mediation was ordered as a way to settle these differences without pursuing a full unfair practices complaint or litigation. The union had no comment on the delay of mediation and has issued no comment so far on the situation at all aside from the language included in their unfair practices filing.

Teachers’ unions and school boards all over the country have been making good use of the mediation process in difficult contract negotiations.