The Culver Community Schools Corporation will save some money on insurance, thanks to an offer from a statewide insurance cooperative. Interim Superintendent Chuck Kitchell told the school board Monday the Educational Service Centers Risk Funding Trust (ESCRFT) recently approached the corporation about providing general liability insurance. “They wanted to give us a proposal, hoping that they could steal our business from our local agent, Scot McKinnis,” he said. “So we asked ESCRFT and Scot to sit down with a committee and share their information, what their organization does, what they would be insuring us for, deductions, limits, and total premium.”
Kitchell said the corporation stands to benefit from the competition. “Our local agent came back and reduced our premium by approximately $40,000 from what we are currently paying this year, which made the difference between what ESCRFT was recommending to us and what our local agent was recommending to us an approximately $50,000 difference,” Kitchell said. “At that point, it kind of made deductibles and limits and some of those things kind of a moot point because at this point, $50,000 in our budget is huge.”
Based on that information, Kitchell recommended the corporation stay with McKinnis and the Miller Insurance Group. School board member Marina Cavazos agreed. “I like the idea that we’re staying local because I think they understand us more than if an outside company came and just was giving us coverage for whatever,” she said.
The school board opted not to take any action Monday. That keeps the corporation with its current provider.
Kitchell added that he felt the process was productive, overall. “As Scot says, ‘Insurance can be fun.’ I’m not sure it’s fun, but he thought is was fun. But it’s enlightening,” Kitchell said. “It’s interesting to see what the coverages are and maybe more interesting to find out where we’re a little bit short on some coverages. So it was a good process.”
He says the corporation will continue to evaluate whether to increase coverage in certain areas, such as cyber security.
