CAMDEN – The approximately 70 educational support staff in SAD 28 and the Five Town CSD are entering a second year without a contract, as negotiations with the district school boards have bogged down over health insurance benefits.

The Megunticook Educational Support Association represents secretaries, clerical staff and educational technicians in the two districts, said co-president Martha Kempe, an educational technician at Rockport Elementary School.

SAD 28 provides education for kindergarten through eighth grade in Camden and Rockport, and the Five Town CSD provides high school education for students from Camden, Rockport, Hope, Appleton and Lincolnville.

Both boards discussed the negotiations in closed session Thursday, but took no action.

While the details of the negotiations are considered confidential, both sides identify the cost of health insurance as a sticking point.

Kempe said pay also is an issue for the support staff.

In an opinion column released Friday, Kempe and association co-president Andrea Hamalainen noted that the majority of members are educational technicians IIs and are paid an hourly wage of $11.82. Their average annual salary is $15,886 for 192 days of work.

“In order to make ends meet, many of us must work after-hours and in the summer,” their column says.

The current contract provides support staff with the option of having free health insurance for the employee, 87 percent coverage under a “choice” plan, or 84 percent cost coverage under a family plan.

Kempe and Hamalainen charge that the district wants to “dramatically alter [members’] health care coverage.”

On Thursday, Kempe said the issue was one of fairness, as teachers and administrators enjoy good health insurance benefits.

“It seems a little unfair,” she added, that administrators have seen pay increases of 4 to 7 percent in the past two years.

“They see us as expendable,” Kempe said, referring to what she described as the district’s attitude toward the support staff. “We are not teachers and we know that,” she said, but the group still expects a “reasonable” benefits package.

Superintendent Pat Hopkins said Friday the boards are trying to contain costs as health insurance premiums rise at unprecedented rates. The board favors a two-tiered benefit plan that will treat existing employees one way, while increasing the cost of health insurance benefits to new employees.

In its own opinion column, the board notes that health insurance costs in the district have increased by more than 140 percent in the past 11 years. Family coverage, which cost $5,517 a year in 1992, now costs “a staggering $13,336.”

Local taxpayers cannot “continue to absorb the escalating cost of health insurance and at the same time continue to maintain the level of educational programs expected by the community,” the board wrote.

“Nevertheless, we also recognize that we can not shift the entire cost of health insurance onto employees. Accordingly, we have asked that our current employees gradually pay a slightly greater portion of the cost of dependent coverage over a three-year period and to agree that employees hired in the future will be entitled to board contributions for single health insurance coverage, but not dependent coverage.”