(Red Oak) - Significant insurance increases continue to give Red Oak school officials some caution.
During its regular meeting Monday evening, the Red Oak School Board approved a one-year insurance agreement for the 2022-23 school year with United Group Insurance, including a 16% increase -- or over $47,000 -- from the current year's total premium of roughly $342,500. The policy covers several areas ranging from worker's compensation to cyber insurance. Red Oak School Superintendent Ron Lorenz says nearly every item on the policy saw an increase.
"That includes commercial property, liability insurance, commercial auto, workers comp, and then there's kind of a generic bucket of additional coverages -- umbrella, errors and omissions, pollution, crime, equipment maintenance, cyber insurance," said Lorenz. "Certainly there's more detail you can get into all of those, but those are kind of the big ones and all of them went up."
After speaking with United Group Insurance representatives, Lorenz says an over 20% increase for commercial property from an already $94,000 premium is unfortunately due to the cost of what he says is "doing business" in today's era.
"The big one, the commercial property insurance, it was one where it's just so expensive to get supplies to do work," said Lorenz. "They said that actually we only had two claims in this area, so our increase was quite small compared to what most districts are experiencing. And I think both of those two big ones are the cost of doing business in this era."
Other notable increases include 26.5% for commercial auto, 23.9% for errors and omissions, and a 35.6% increase for cyber insurance from a previous premium of just over $4,000.
Lorenz says United Group Insurance has provided similar coverage for the past two years. While the board could have pursued another request for proposal, he said it might have been too late.
"We can pursue and do an RFP and see other competitive quotes, but at this point I think we're kind of late in the game to do that," said Lorenz. "That being said, (United Group Insurance) just met with us last Thursday and I think they've experienced some trouble getting numbers from their folks. So, it's just kind of trickled down."
While acknowledging the tight deadline for the upcoming school year, Board President Bret Blackman suggested continuing to re-bid the insurance coverage to hopefully find more competitive rates.
