COLUMBUS — Teachers packed Tuesday night’s Columbus school board meeting as board leader Miranda confronted the district’s health insurance fiasco — a benefits-plan mess that a forensic audit says cost up to $40 million more than expected.
The outside audit of the district’s dealings with health insurance consultant Aon concluded the firm “generally treated the district as a taxpayer-funded cash cow” while building the employee benefits plan for 2025 and 2026. The district has been weighing whether to fire a human resources administrator who improperly signed contracts and failed to keep records on the Aon deal.
Miranda said human resources staff caught the overrun, and she rejected the idea that money vanished. No money was “lost, stolen or misspent,” she said — it paid for employees’ doctor visits, treatments and health benefits. The district lost about $24 million after underfunding the plan by $1 million in the first half of 2026, and the final cost is unlikely to reach $40 million.
Board members said any legal resolution would take years and would not fix health care costs for 2027. Teachers and staff will be watching closely to see whether the fallout lands on their paychecks or the district’s budget next year.
