The operating model did not keep up

The severity environment around California school liability moved faster than the claims operating model did. That is the thesis. The dollar figures that followed AB 218 matter, and they appear below as context. The load-bearing point is procedural: on a working desk, a serious file still has to be held together across coverage, counsel, calendars, and timelines by people who already carry a full stack. One missed procedural window used to be an expensive annoyance. Under the current tower, it can be existential for the pool and for the member districts that own it.

Under the current tower, one missed procedural window can be existential for the pool and for the member districts that own it.

What a school JPA is

A California Joint Powers Authority is a public agency formed under Government Code section 6500 et seq. Two or more public agencies agree to exercise jointly a power they already share. School districts have the power to procure insurance and retain risk, so they can pool that risk with other districts through a JPA.

The resulting pool is not a commercial insurance company. The California Department of Insurance does not regulate it the way it regulates carriers. Members pay contributions, not premiums in the CDI sense. Surplus belongs to the members. In a bad year, deficits can be assessed back to them. Governance is public: Brown Act meetings, Public Records Act disclosure, and, for most large pools, CAJPA accreditation as the de facto industry benchmark for governance, claims, and underwriting practice.

Most modern California school JPAs retain a primary layer on their own balance sheet and purchase excess or reinsurance above that retention. SELF (Schools Excess Liability Fund) sits as a statewide excess liability backstop above many of those regional pools. The people who run these organizations are claims, litigation, and risk professionals working for member-owned public agencies. They are not selling policies for shareholder return.

What changed

Assembly Bill 218, signed in 2019 and effective in 2020, extended the time for survivors of childhood sexual assault to bring claims, opened a three-year revival window for previously time-barred claims, and authorized treble damages where a cover-up could be proven. The litigation wave that followed has rewritten the financial calculus of every California school pool.

Public reporting puts the scale in plain view:

• FCMAT’s January 31, 2025 report to the Legislature states the best estimate of the dollar value of claims brought to date because of AB 218 is $2-$3 billion for local educational agencies. Later coverage notes that some projections now run higher still.
• Claims against California schools stemming from this era total nearly $3 billion, according to CalMatters reporting in July 2025. Routine settlements in the class often land in the $5 million to $10 million range. Some verdicts are far larger. A 2023 jury award against Moreno Valley Unified reached $135 million. Los Angeles Unified has expected to pay more than $500 million to settle a portion of its claims.
• SELF reported 412 AB 218 claims through October 31, 2024, involving 632 plaintiffs. Roughly half of those claims had been settled for $145.4 million, with the rest pending, according to EdSource’s account of SELF’s 2023-24 AB 218 report (the most recent public summary available; SELF does not publish settlement announcements itself).
• The Los Angeles Times reported that SELF has issued a series of special assessments totaling about $595 million to cover verdicts and settlements that were never reserved for.
• Liability costs have risen for districts that have never been sued, because risk is pooled. FCMAT notes that liability coverage premiums have risen by more than 700% in the past decade, and that more than 85% of the California reinsurance market for this risk has disappeared. Districts and counties have reported insurance cost jumps of a million dollars a year or more. Reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle describes carriers exiting California public-entity school coverage and pools seeking capacity overseas.

None of that is abstract for a claims or litigation leader. It shows up as higher member contributions, special assessments, tighter reinsurance terms, and files where a single procedural miss carries a different weight than it did a decade ago.

Where files still break

The structural problem is not that pools lack adjusters, counsel, or RMIS platforms. Most large school JPAs already run serious claims operations: in-house adjusters, panel defense counsel, coverage analysis, reserve setting, and a risk management information system. Origami, Riskonnect, and peer platforms are common in the public-entity space.

The break is synthesis across too many dimensions for one desk to hold consistently under load. If you run claims or litigation for a school pool, you already know the shape of this.

A serious liability file asks the desk to keep several threads live at once. Coverage must be checked against alleged dates of loss, not only the filing date. Government Claims Act notice periods and other statutory clocks have to be calendared early. Counsel status reports contain action items that only matter if someone extracts them into the adjuster’s calendar and tracks whether they landed. Reserve adequacy depends on integrating defense counsel’s qualitative read of venue, plaintiff counsel, and case posture, not only on the numbers already in the system. Related claims from the same member or naming the same alleged actor should surface as a coordinated view rather than as isolated files.

Any one of those checks is doable. The failure mode is cumulative. An adjuster carrying a working stack cannot hold every relevant dimension in working memory across every file, every day. The information is often already in the claim file, the counsel note, or the public docket. What fails is the consistent connection of the right fact to the right person before the window closes.

That gap is operational. Buying another claims platform does not close it by itself. Neither does a generic “AI for insurance” pitch that ignores how public-entity pools actually govern data, privilege, and board accountability.

What “good” looks like

Good looks like procedural competence scaled to the severity environment the pool already faces.

In practice, that means a second pass over material the desk is already responsible for reading. Coverage timelines get checked at intake against alleged incident dates. Counsel notes get scanned for procedural actions with deadlines, and those actions get calendared with an owner. Statutory and notice clocks get flagged on day one. Reserve reviews get prompted when the qualitative case read changes. Pattern links across related files get surfaced early enough to change defense coordination.

The discipline is synthesis: hold more of the file’s own dimensions consistently than a tired desk can hold alone on the seventh file of the afternoon.

Architecture follows the problem. Phase-appropriate designs process data the adjuster already works with, respect the privilege boundary around panel-counsel communications until counsel and leadership are ready to expand scope, and sit on the pool’s existing cloud and RMIS footprint rather than forcing a rip-and-replace. The point is fewer silent misses, not a product demo.

If you run claims or litigation for a school pool

You already own the file. You already own the desk load. The question is whether the severity environment you are funding still matches how that desk holds coverage, counsel notes, calendars, and related claims together under pressure.

Henry Street Advisors designs and builds a second pass over material your adjusters are already reading: a queue of flags for human review, scoped to your RMIS and cloud footprint, with privileged panel-counsel communications kept out until your counsel and leadership choose to expand. The public analysis above is the sector pattern. The work itself is scoped to your shop after a short conversation, not before.

How to reach us

Ben McEachen
Henry Street Advisors
https://henrystreetadvisors.com/contact

If two or three of the fault lines map onto your operation, say so. We will take it from there.

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Sources

1. California Government Code § 6500 et seq. (Joint Exercise of Powers Act). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&division=7.&title=1.&part=&chapter=5.&article=1.
2. CAJPA Accreditation Program. https://www.cajpa.org/page/accreditation
3. Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), “Childhood Sexual Assault: Fiscal Implications for California Public Agencies” (January 31, 2025). https://www.fcmat.org/PublicationsReports/child-sexual-assault-fiscal-implications-report.pdf
4. CalMatters, “Child sex abuse lawsuits cost CA schools close to $3 billion” (July 2025). https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2025/07/child-sex-abuse-california/
5. CalMatters / Local News Matters, “California schools see insurance premiums soar in response to sex abuse law changes” (February 2026). https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/02/22/california-schools-see-insurance-premiums-soar-in-response-to-sex-abuse-law-changes/
6. EdSource, “California school districts pay for abuse settlements despite no claims” (January 2026). https://edsource.org/2026/california-school-districts-pay-for-abuse-settlements-despite-no-claims/749568
7. Los Angeles Times, “California public schools face billions in costs from sex abuse claims” (December 19, 2025). https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-12-19/california-public-schools-face-billions-in-costs-from-sex-abuse-claims
8. San Francisco Chronicle, “As lawsuits pile up, California schools seek insurance overseas.” https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/school-insurance-law-california-20813006.php
9. SELF (Schools Excess Liability Fund), About Us / member materials. https://www.selfjpa.org/about-us
10. Best Best & Krieger overview of California JPAs. https://bbklaw.com/resources/the-ins-and-outs-of-joint-powers-authorities-in-california