The California Education Coalition for Health Care Reform (CECHCR) is a statewide partnership of management and labor organizations representing the state’s public school and community college districts. Its members are committed to improving health care quality and reducing costs in the state's public education sector through training, education and advocacy. The recent passage of health care reform, the Affordable Care Act, supports the important role CECHCR plays in helping districts and unions come together to work towards finding solutions that provide quality, affordable health care for the entire education community.


CECHCR was formed in 2005 through a grant from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in response to escalating health care costs and the devastating impact they are having on the public education sector. In June 2007 funding was provided to the coalition through the Center for Collaborative Solutions by The California Endowment, California HealthCare Foundation and CECHCR member organizations to educate public education district and union purchasers of health care services and enable them to make better decisions and effectively engage in the health care reform debate, ultimately leading to reduction in cost growth and improvement in quality of care.

A central part of the coalition’s work is the development of the CECHCR Health Benefits Training Modules and Follow-Up Services offered to districts free of charge. The information and tools presented in the trainings empower districts to make smarter health care choices by shedding light on the complex maze of health benefit issues so they can leverage their knowledge to identify solutions that improve services and save money. To date, CECHCR has trained labor-management teams in nearly 200 districts throughout the state, and its efforts are having an impact.

In May 2010 through a collaborative process aimed at exploring alternative, cost effective methods of providing coverage, CECHCR introduced a design for a statewide school pool that promises a new direction in health care purchasing for California’s public education community. CECHCR believes that a school pool is a sustainable solution to the health care crisis in education that will lower costs, improve services and make collective bargaining much easier while improving labor-management relationships.

Moving forward, CECHCR is positioned to connect districts and unions with the resources they need to understand how health care reform will impact employee health and access to affordable coverage through new, alternative methods such as exchanges. And CECHCR will continue to help districts reduce and contain costs through identifying opportunities to maximize the resources available under the new law, and what the potential impacts will be.

We hope that you will join us in working towards improving the quality and reducing the cost of health care for all school employers and employees in California’s public schools. We welcome your input and suggestions. For further information, or to set up a training program email Vicky Sjol, CECHCR Executive Assistant, or call her at (916) 567-9911, ext. 18.

CECHCR is committed to providing the training to as many K-12 school districts, community college districts and county offices of education as possible. There is no cost for the training or materials. So that CECHCR can best use its resources, it is important to have multi-district trainings where there are five or six districts that attend the training. This can be arranged through a County Office of Education, or school districts where representatives can geographically come together for the training.