Update on Illinois: Thank God I don’t live in Palatine!

where the Elementary School District 15 School Board has, as far as I, or pretty much any observer, can tell, given away the farm in its negotiations with the teachers’ union.   The School Board has promised raises of 2.5% for the first four years of the contract, and 4% for the last six years, and, yes, that means it’s a 10 year contract, which is unheard of for all the obvious reasons — the fact that so many factors are up in the air over a 10 year time period puts the School District at risk of serious financial difficulties in the future.  (How many people these days get 4% raises?)  And those 2.5%/4% raises don’t even take into account the cost impact of pay hikes for teachers earning master’s degrees or other graduate credits, and the district faces additional cost increases depending on medical inflation.  And there are also “step” increases for each year of teaching experience on top of these annual raises.  (This isn’t mentioned in the various reporting, but it’s a standard part of a teacher’s contract — see the existing D15 contract, available online.)  Oh, and all upper-middle-class school districts in Illinois are at risk of significant losses in State funding, as multiple proposals have been made to shift more state money from broad state-wide formulas to direct it specifically to poor districts.

(Geographical note:  School District 15 is generally identified as being in Palatine, a middle to upper-middle class suburb northwest of Chicago, but, like many Illinois districts, it stretches over a number of towns, including wealthy areas such as Inverness and poorer areas such as two pockets of apartment complexes with a poor immigrant population.)

And how they’ll pay for these pay hikes?  The favorite school district means of claiming free money:  by offering older teachers incentives to early-retire in the form of modest versions of pension spiking — 6%/year raises for the last four years of work, if they commit to retiring — so as to replace them with younger teachers paid half as much.  (See the Chicago Tribune for details, or the Daily Herald for a non-paywalled report.)  Of course, this in itself is either an indicator that the entire “step” schedule is too generous, if teachers get pushed out, or the retirement benefits are too generous, if large numbers of teachers can afford to early retire, or, alternatively, if those teachers deserve their higher pay because their years of experience translates into greater skill, this simply means that they’re deliberately cutting the quality of their instruction.   And it might indeed not materialize at all, if the teachers don’t take the deal.  (And never mind that this pushes pension costs onto State taxpayers.)

And why would the district agree to a 10-year deal?  According to the Tribune,

One person who might have helped bridge the gap was Lisa Nuss. She was the union president until last year, when she joined the administrative staff as executive director of personnel and human services. Nuss could not be reached for comment Friday. Thompson said he led the negotiations, and Nuss did not unduly influence them.

So, yes, I’m relieved that it’s not my district at risk of serious financial trouble down the road.  But my district, or yours, could be next.

Image:  university students at a Negotiation Tournament – who are probably making a better effort to secure a good deal than the School Board. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWarsaw_Negotiation_Round_Senate_of_Poland_2014_01.JPG; By Michał Józefaciuk (Senat Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) [CC BY-SA 3.0 pl (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/pl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons