The USD 443 Board of Education voted Dec. 8 to accept staff’s recommendation to move the district’s property/casualty and cyber coverages to the KICKS insurance pool after an extended discussion about risk, cost and governance.

Mary, an insurance representative who addressed the board during public comment, urged caution. "Kicks is not insurance. It's a pool," she said, warning that pools can assess members for losses and that money paid into a pool is not spent locally in the same way as traditional insurance. She also noted KICKS requires a three-year commitment.

Business services staff and a KICKS representative explained how the pool operates. "One of the ideas was... if we went ahead to move January [to] KICKS, that then takes away the gamble of moving through a spring season and going through our wind and hail season," the district presenter said, citing timing as a practical consideration. The KICKS representative described member governance, use of reinsurance (Lloyd’s of London), and a loss-allocation formula that includes both an all-member insurance charge and a variable loss-cost component for districts with claims.

Staff provided an approximate cost comparison for the coming months: an annualized insurance run-rate of roughly $400,000 and an estimated difference of about $80,000 for the next six months if the district moved to KICKS with the pool’s proposed $250,000 per-occurrence wind/hail deductible. Board members raised repeated questions about the difference between a flat per-occurrence deductible and the district's current 1% per-building percentage deductible and about whether the pool's shared layers could produce higher bills after large regional losses.

KICKS representatives said surcharges for districts with claims are applied on the variable-cost side and that, while catastrophic events can influence the overall rate for all members, the actuarial model assigns the brunt of individual large claims to the affected district. They also said the pool was sized to stabilize rates with the addition of many members and that member-driven governance provides opportunities to vote on changes.

After questions and discussion, the board moved to accept the recommendation to join the KICKS pool and the chair announced the motion carried following the vocal vote in favor.

Next steps: staff will complete enrollment steps with KICKS and bring any implementation details (including final contract language, effective dates and coverage specifics) back to the board as available.