DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – The Detroit Public Schools Community District offers an insurance plan that is a HMO that would cost an employee on a single-person insurance plan $282 a year in premiums.

The more extensive health plans offered would cost that same employee $4,183 a year.

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Those type of premiums for employees are possible because the public school district covers 80% of the total health care costs. That’s the option many public school districts in Michigan have chosen under state law.

And those costs are going up.

The Detroit school district’s Finance Committee will review the costs of its health care plan at its Sept. 17 meeting and is planning for the school district to spend $79.1 million for its health care plans in 2026. That cost increased by $7.9 million in 2026 over the previous year.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District also stated it is seeing a significant increase in high-cost claims.

The district said they had a 65% increase in the number of members with at least $200,000 in claims from 2023 to 2024. And that cost an additional $5.7 million.

The district promotes its benefit package and uses it as a recruiting tool to hire more teachers.

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In 2020, Detroit superintendent Nikolai Vitti said he wanted to make Detroit teachers the highest paid in the country. However, Detroit teachers are not even the highest paid in Wayne County with at least a dozen school districts in that county having a higher average teacher salary as of 2023-24.

The average salary of a Detroit public school teacher has increased from $57,997 in 2017-18 to $76,902 in 2023-24, according to the state of Michigan.