Small school districts in Florida band together to lower health costs for employees
WUSF |
By Ana Goñi-Lessan, News Service of Florida
Published August 9, 2026 at 5:00 AM EDT
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As many Florida school districts look to close schools to cope with declining enrollment, leading to budget cuts, some are banding together to reduce another key factor to their bottom lines: health insurance premiums
Rising health insurance costs have pushed about a third of Florida’s 67 school districts to join the Florida Educator Health Trust (FLEHT), a nonprofit organization under the umbrella of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents
By combining forces, smaller school districts have found a way to bargain for better health insurance policies for their teachers by turning to a self-insured plan. It’s eased the financial burden for districts already stretched thin by record-low birth rates and an expansion of school vouchers, which have led to lower enrollment and budget cuts.
“When we were fully insured, our insurance premium rose every single year, from anywhere from 6 percent to 20 percent,” said Mike Swindle, the superintendent for Hendry County. “When we switched to the self-insured model, in the first two years that we were in it, we saved over $3 million. It has been an absolute economic benefit to our district and to our teachers.”
Some public school employees are optimistic and say they’ve seen a drop in their prescription prices. But Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, said he’s still waiting to see those savings hit the pockets of teachers
“So far, we have not seen any examples of a cooperative approach in which FLEHT has been able to address the out-of-control costs of health care while saving districts and employees money,” Spar said
FLEHT was established by the Florida School Board Insurance Trust, also under the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. While the latter helps small school districts with property and casualty insurance, FLEHT is specifically for health insurance
The first three members were Hendry, Hardee and DeSoto counties. But starting in June 2025, the number of districts has surged to 23, including larger school districts like Polk and Brevard counties
Currently, about 65,000 public school employees are now insured by FLEHT. Comparatively, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools has 40,000 employees on its own and is the fourth largest public school district in the country
The goal is to have FLEHT reach 30 districts by the end of the year, Swindle said
Ted Roush, a former Suwannee County superintendent and now the executive director of FLEHT, said that when a district joins the trust, each district’s superintendent becomes a voting member and helps decide what vendors the districts will work with
The program works more like a nonprofit versus the legacy broker market, Roush said
“In every single scenario, after a board chooses to join FLEHT, we’re able to find and bring up savings initially right out of the gate,” he said
In the first quarter of 2026, FLEHT said its districts saved more than $7.8 million
In Hendry County, Swindle said the money they’ve saved has gone into their reserves, and the district has now started risk sharing with other school districts
Risk sharing means several districts share the financial responsibility for health care claims, which spreads the burden and ensures no district is particularly affected by an expensive year of claims
“When (the insurance companies) were coming at us with a 16 percent increase, the only way to meet that is you have to cut something else in your district,” Swindle said. “By going self-insured, we took that profitability out of it, and we’re not having to make cuts. We’re able to utilize the money to benefit our district and in turn our employees, either in benefits, salary or just be a stronger financial district.”
Kimberly Stitt, president of the Hendry County Education Association, said after the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers saw the prices of their prescription medications rise at a 20-to-30 percent rate. Since joining FLEHT, those prices have dropped
Currently, some district employees in Hendry County, a rural county in southwest Florida, have to travel outside of the county to seek medical care
But with FLEHT, conceptual plans for the future include local in-house clinics open only to district employees to provide prescriptions at a fraction of the price paid in the normal market, Stitt said
Hendry’s teachers, however, are still not satisfied with the district’s current costs for family and spouse coverage, Stitt said. Many teachers have to use the state insurance plans for their children because the district’s options are unaffordable
But the local teachers’ union and the district continue to work on changes together, she said
“People need to understand there is another side to this and it can be done. It just takes effort on both sides,” Stitt said
Spar said the ideas FLEHT has brought forward are similar to the solutions local unions have been proposing all over the state
“The bottom line is, health care is a complex issue that requires a collaborative approach and a need to address the underlying problem, which is a chronic lack of investment in educators by our state,” Spar said
