Public Schools Initiative

In Fall 2002 the public school community in Sonoma County held a conference and discussion on the health care crisis. Participants included Superintendents, business managers, human resource directors, risk managers, union staff, local union leaders, and those involved in collective bargaining on health benefits in the school systems.

The purpose of the conference was to consider coming together as a community to talk and learn what central factors are driving costs up so badly and to consider studying how to humanely contain costs and begin to design the future of health care we want. The facilitators helped the participants consider cooperative preparation for the coming collective bargaining work on health care cost, design, and responsibility issues.

The conference was sponsored by the California Teachers Association, California School Employees Association, and Service Employees International Union Local 707

It was convened at the Sonoma State University Cooperage and was hosted by Sonoma State University's Provost's Office and the Psychology Department.

Go to Related Links on the right side of this page to find links to the November 21 conference, participants' comments, evaluations and proposed actions.

A Spring Conference on the Health Cre Crisis in Sonoma County, for the wider Sonoma County community as well as its public schools, is being planned for Friday and Staurday, May 9th and 10th.

Facilitators were:

Skip Robinson, Ph.D., SSU Lecturer in Psychology, Adjunct Faculty in the SSU Conflict Resolution Certificate Program, and facilitator/coordinator of the new initiative on the Sonoma County Health Care Crisis

Ellen Shaffer, Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Professor, UCSF and Director, Center for Policy Analysis for Trade and Health Washington D.C. and San Francisco

Tom Moore, senior consultant on health policies and programs in San Francisco