Since last fall, the South Butler School District, whose teachers have been working under terms of a contract that expired on June 30, 2008, has been awaiting a nonbinding decision by an arbitrator. Major issues in the protracted contract stalemate include wages and teachers' contribution toward their health care coverage.

Meanwhile, teachers in the Karns City School District notified the school board last week of their intention to go on strike Sept. 1 if a new contract is not in place by then. Those teachers have been working under terms of a pact that expired June 30, 2009. Like in South Butler, the Karns City stalemate has wages and health care contributions as major stumbling blocks.

While the wage issue in the two districts revolves around what both sides perceive as an amount that the districts can afford — and, from the teachers' perspective, trying to keep their wages on par with what teachers in other area districts are being paid — the health-care-contributions issue revolves around how little teachers should have to pay for coverage that is superior to what many workers in the private sector have.

In the Karns City negotiations, teachers have offered to contribute $15 a month for individual coverage — the payment currently is $10 — and $25 a month for family coverage. In South Butler, teachers have resist-ed paying more than their current $10 a month for individual coverage and $20 a month for family coverage.

Using Karns City as an example, the current cost to the district — to the taxpayers — for individual coverage is $430 a month, and for family coverage, $1,136 a month.

Not a bad deal from the teachers' vantage point.

In both districts, taxpayers should be looking at such numbers and, based on their own circumstances, expressing an opinion as to whether they feel that the current teacher health care contributions are fair.

Indeed, taxpayers in other districts should learn about the situation in their respective school systems. For example, the Butler School District's three-year early bird contract approval in 2009 covering the 2011-12 through 2013-14 fiscal years leaves unchanged the teachers' meager health care contributions of $20 a month for single-person coverage and $30 a month for family coverage.

In that early bird pact, the Butler teachers received wage increases of 4.38 percent, 4.54 percent and 4.52 percent, respectively.

On the health-care-contributions front, taxpayers throughout Pennsylvania should be asking why their school boards, over the last 30 or 40 years, when teachers' wages have increased at a faster pace than wages in many other segments of the economy, have not stood firm against teachers' resistance to making reasonable contributions toward their health coverage.

On that point, it can be asked why contract negotiations across Pennsylvania, including here in Butler County, consistently have centered on a dollar contribution toward health care coverage. A better approach would be to set a percentage basis that would result in the teachers sharing the cost of any future premium increases — premium increases now borne solely by districts' taxpayers.

Teachers' paying a share of premium increases on top of whatever percentage they were otherwise required to pay would make them more cognizant of the rising-health-care-costs issue. That might produce two positive results.

First, teachers might not be so resistant to their school district opting for a new insurance carrier that would provide comparable coverage at a lower cost — since they also would reap financial benefits.

Second, insurance carriers, when faced with the possibility of losing a large pool of people to a competitor, would be more inclined to hold down premium increases.

For example, every one of the 500 school districts in Pennsylvania except Butler has health care coverage provided by Blue Cross-Blue Shield. Would Blue Cross-Blue Shield be willing to provide a better financial deal to districts if it faced the real possibility of losing some of those other 499 districts? Probably.

How long school districts will be able to continue maintaining the health care coverage status quo is a question that should be of top priority in all Keystone State school systems. The urgency of that question is intensified by the coming burden on the taxpayers resulting from a shortsighted teachers pension boost approved by state lawmakers in 2001 — the financial burden reportedly kicking in across the state starting in 2012.

Up to now, the South Butler and Karns City school boards have resisted approval of new teachers contracts that they feel would hurt the districts and their taxpayers. Those savings efforts have been centered mostly on wages.

But health care contributions by the teachers should have been — and should be — given the attention that that issue deserves. Unfortunately, judging from what has transpired in the negotiations up to now, it won't be.

The contributions situation that has continued over the years in Butler County and beyond has carried the message "The Taxpayers Be Damned." There are many taxpayers here and elsewhere in the commonwealth who firmly believe that attitude must change.