PENDLETON — As the superintendent of South Madison Community Schools defended teacher compensation on Thursday, Sept. 3, he painted a dire picture of a financial iceberg that he said lies ahead.

“If we can’t do something about insurance, this district will be bankrupt,” Superintendent Tom Warmke told the South Madison School Board.

Warmke made a presentation on teacher salary and benefit packages after board member Mike Gaskill said he was “somewhat disappointed” by claims made by Margaret Eversole, president of the South Madison Classroom Teachers Association.

In a reader viewpoint on Wednesday, Sept. 2’s Commentary page in The Herald Bulletin, Eversole wrote that South Madison teachers were among the lowest-paid in the state, and that “even when you calculate in our benefits, our ranking does not change considerably.”

South Madison teachers have been without a contract since 2008, and board members asked Warmke questions that challenged assertions in Eversole’s letter.

Warmke offered a presentation that compared South Madison wages to Indiana school corporations paying the highest salaries.

While South Madison was well below the top-paying systems, he said South Madison paid more of the teachers’ insurance premiums than any of those districts. When the costs of those are factored, he said, the district is in the top 10 in Indiana.

For school districts across the state, Warmke said teachers on average pay about $5,000 per year for insurance premiums. They pay $783 to $1,829 at South Madison, he said. The district pays insurance premiums of $18,494 to $21,582 per teacher.

“The district is making a very serious effort to pay teachers the best we can,” he said.

“We have stepped up to the plate.”

Warmke said South Madison saw a 21 percent increase in health insurance claims last year, when the self-insured system paid more than $4 million in claims. He said within four or five years, the cost of insurance could reach $30,000 per teacher policy.

“There’s not an easy solution to this,” he said. “We simply can’t keep on the same path.”

In other business, the board heard a report on South Madison’s performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test last school year. Director of School Improvement Sandra Hudson said the average combined score at South Madison was 1,000, just below the state average of 1,003 and the national average of 1,016.

More students took the test last year, she said.

Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com