The cost of covering employee healthcare has risen so sharply for Georgia school systems over the past 16 years that districts say it is forcing them to cut corners on the services they can offer students.
The scale of the increase is stark. In 2010, a district paid roughly $2,000 a year toward health coverage for each noncertified employee. Today that figure tops $23,000 a year, according to data from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, and the cost of health insurance roughly doubled between 2022 and 2026 alone. "It has become astronomical," said Ashley Young of the institute, "and it has really become one of the biggest burdens that school districts have been dealing with."
Big Budgets, Bigger Bills
The numbers are heaviest in the metro Atlanta districts. Fulton County, which approved a budget carrying a reported $57 million shortfall this year, set aside $206 million for healthcare in its general fund for next year. DeKalb County plans to spend a total of $284 million on employee health coverage.
For smaller systems, the share of the budget consumed is proportionally worse. In Baldwin County, a small system in Milledgeville, employee benefits make up about a third of the $56 million annual budget. Of $16.5 million in benefits, the district has to cover nearly $10 million with local funds, said Superintendent Kristina Brooks. "It's significant," she said. "The rising healthcare costs are crippling."
How It Started
The pressure traces back to 2010, when the fallout from the Great Recession led state lawmakers to cut funding for noncertified school employees, the bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and secretaries who keep buildings running. Districts were suddenly on the hook for the full employer contribution toward those workers' health coverage, with no state money behind it. As premiums climbed year after year, that gap widened into one of the largest line items a district cannot control.
To absorb it, Baldwin County has dipped into its emergency reserves every year and shifted work to contractors rather than in-house staff, using third-party vendors for all of its custodians and cafeteria workers and many of its paraprofessionals. Young said that outsourcing is now a common survival tactic across Georgia.
A National Squeeze
The problem is not unique to Georgia. In a survey of more than 700 leaders by the School Superintendents Association (AASA) and the Association of School Business Officials International, hundreds of district leaders said rising healthcare costs were measurably hitting their budgets, and nearly all said that for the 2025-26 school year, healthcare made up 30% or more of their spending.
Sasha Pudelski, the AASA's director of advocacy, said she was struck by how universal the pressure was across districts of every size. Superintendents pointed to rising prescription drug costs as a leading driver and said they had responded by delaying hiring, drawing down reserves, and pausing purchases of curriculum and technology. "This is having a profound impact," Pudelski said, "and forcing superintendents to make tradeoffs which directly impact students."
The association is pressing the federal government to fully fund mandates like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which would free up local and state dollars, and urging states to revisit their education funding formulas, an area where advocates say Georgia has lagged. "Additional funding from the state is exactly what we are pushing for," Young said. "For the entire amount for noncertified employees to be shifted to the districts, it's just not sustainable."
The through-line is simple, and it is what worries the people running these budgets: every dollar a district spends on a health premium is a dollar it does not spend in a classroom. As the premiums keep climbing faster than state support, that math only gets harder.
Sources
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Rising healthcare costs are 'crippling' Georgia school systems
Georgia Budget and Policy Institute
AASA, The School Superintendents Association
