Prescriptions for budget busting: educators confront spiraling health costs led by drug price hikes. It's time to boost buying power. (News).(insurance costs and budget cuts)(Brief Article)

Warren Baab holds a job you might envy. In the rural calm of Idaho's Whitepine Joint School District No. 288, he shuttles between Bovill Elementary and Deary High School to help teachers and students work with new technology.

Baab is pleased to work for a district that "has a strong commitment to education" and that offers a video editing class in a rural high school that graduates just 20 students a year. And he's proud of his technical set-up at Deary High, including a school TV station and a digital video editing lab.

But Baab is aware that this technology, while crucial, is expensive. And he's keenly aware that his district "needs to do even more to assist kids from different backgrounds and knowledge bases," while offering instructional programs that are "relevant, motivate, and reduce frustrations."

But each time Baab, the president of the Whitepine Education Association, goes to the bargaining table, he sees fewer bucks in the "one pot of money" that pays for everything from pencils to programs.

The top of that pot is sinking from state aid cutbacks, and the …