When is the next school board election?

EDITOR’S NOTE: April, 2015.

For D-207, the seats currently held by Sean Sullivan, Carla Owen and Paula Besler will be open. For D-64, the seats currently held by Dan Collins, John Heyde and Tony Borrelli will be open.

Of the two boards, we believe the D-64 Board is the more important because the three members elected in 2015 will be on the board for the negotiation of the next teachers union contract, while that ship has sailed for 5 years at D-207. Rumor has it that Sharon Lawson and Pat Fioretto were “drafted” in 2009 for the specific purpose of being guaranteed pro-PREA votes on the D-64 Board for the negotiations that would take place in 2012, so we can expect that the PREA will once again support Collins and Heyde, if they run; or equally-dependable PREA sycophants if they don’t.

Whether the PREA remains wary of Borrelli remains to be seen. He was one of only 2 “no” votes (the other was Eric Uhlig) against the current PREA contract in 2012, and retired D-64 teacher/PREA activist Fred Klonsky barbecued Borrelli on his PREAPREZ blog. But the PREA can afford to leave Borrelli alone so long as it can assure itself of a friendly majority without him.

Plus, D-64 appears to be the more underperforming of the two.

Thanks for your analysis of pay. Could you please equate this to how much that will bring the retirement pay too,after how many years of service and at what age?

EDITOR’S NOTE: It varies, but for a 25-30 year teacher we understand it starts at 75% of final salary and then escalates by COLA. We do know of one retired D-207 administrator who has been retired for 18 years, now gets $147K/year pension, and paid a total of only $129K into the plan while working.

One source of that information, however, is http://www.openthebooks.com/

A unanimous vote of the D-207 board for a 5 year contract with guaranteed COLA based raises, step increases and merit pay? These board members are supposed to represent that taxpayers?

It looks like the people we elect to be good stewards of our tax dollars and our schools are proving themselves to be enablers of teachers and administrators who already make more (sometimes a whole lot more) for 8 months of work than many of the people paying their salaries make for working a whole year.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The act of approving this kind of contract is the kind of thing that suggests that each Board member who voted for it is unfit for that office – absent a whole lot better explanation for it than Ms. McGrath has provided so far. But what should we expect from people who prefer to negotiate in secret, disclose nothing about the negotiations, and approve the contract without even giving the taxpayers a chance to read and comment on it?

What may be the only saving grace is that we don’t have to deal with Karen Lewis. Yech!

To clarify what a retired public school teacher will receive as deferred compensation in retirement. Under Tier 1, it is currently 2.2% of salary per each year of service in TRS. A teacher with 25 years of service would receive 55% of final salary. The maximum a teacher can receive is 75% of final salary after 34 years of service. Participants in the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) do not receive Social Security or receive a much reduced amount of Social Security under the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) if they had non-public employment during their lifetime. A retired teacher’s TRS pension is increased by 3% compounded each year on January 1st. For most teachers, their TRS pension is the only retirement security they have.

New teachers hired in the last few years fall under a program called Tier 2. This plan passed by the Illinois Legislature does not offer the above benefits and is so broken the fear of local school districts is the federal government will declare Tier 2 not a viable retirement plan thus requiring all Tier 2 members and their employers to begin to pay in to Social Security. There is now talk in Springfield as to how the Legislature is going to “fix” Tier 2 so the feds do not step in.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Berkowitz, especially the reminder that teachers don’t get Social Security.

According to the Social Security FAQ Page, https://faq.ssa.gov/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=1798/, for 2013 the maximum annual benefit for a person who retired at age 62 was $23,076 ($1,923/mo.); $30,396 ($2,533/mo.) for a person who retired at 65; and $40,200 ($3,350/mo.) for a person who retired at age 70.

So a typical full-time 25-year D-207 teacher (who, if he/she started teaching at age 25, could retire at age 50) likely making $100K (plus) would get $55,000, or $15,000 more per year than the Social Security recipient also making $100K who waits until age 70 to retire. And the teacher would start collecting that amount 20 years sooner (and maybe 20 years longer) than the Social Security recipient. And that same teacher who retires after 34 years on the job (at age 59) would get $75,000 – almost DOUBLE what the Social Security recipient gets, and 11 years sooner (and maybe 11 years longer).

Oh, those poor abused teachers! Whatever will they do without Social Security?

And PD… for that teacher that takes out the $55k a year, for say 30 years, or $1.650 million, what, based on what you know about contributions, did he or she put in? Are you able to say?

If it is anything like in your example sited to 10:32 above is it no wonder the pension systems in this state are going broke??

EDITOR’S NOTE: Based on what we know, we’d guess no more than $60K, although a lot depends on how many years a teacher or administrator is earning at a particular level. If the teacher/administrator earned at a low rate for many years but then got some big jumps (or promotions) in the last few years of his/her career, the pension would be disproportionately large for the amount of the lifetime contribution.

Thank you PD… and that is why our pension systems are totally FUBAR.

As a smart guy I know likes to say… it’s math!!

EDITOR’S NOTE: It usually is, and even politicians and bureaucrats can’t beat it – they can only obscure it.

I had Fred Klonsky as an art teacher at Field in the ’90s and remember him being a leader in the D64 strikes about 10 years ago, so I was interested to discover the existence of his blog and read some of his choice posts re: Borrelli.

It’s uncanny how similar he sounds to Poehler, and you are right, it’s totally an Orwellian doublespeak: “In a district that has for years placed an emphasis on educating the whole child, students’ emotional intelligence and academic progress, Borrelli is almost obsessed with how Park Ridge schools rank in the state…”

I can’t help but think that long-term exposure to this type of rhetoric might be the best explanation for the warped behavior of almost all of these board members. Even Borrelli votes the wrong way sometimes, and Paterno is a total failure. I wonder if there is any chance that Ben Seib would run again next year? I’d love to see what Klonsky would have to say about him if he won!

EDITOR’S NOTE: The union folks – and the teachers and administrators they speak for – have their agendas, their venacular and their sound-bites. That’s not the problem.

The problem is the spineless, soft-headed enablers of those union folks who masquerade as elected officials looking out for the taxpayers.

There are a lot of ways to redress unfairness and poor fiscal judgment, but until you start talking about raising the income amount on which Social Security taxes are levied, you’re not serious about fairness or about saving money.

As a beleagured taxpayer, I have no desire to cut the pay and benefits of our teaching staff, since done right, the job can offer gains for the country that are high impact and multi-generational. However, they’d better start being held to the highest standards to earn that pay and those benefits. The job should not be attracting those who think, “well, you can always teach.” Administrators are even more beholden for results, as they’re the managers and they’re paid that way even if they never see a kid up close. Until the school board can shoehorn in some metrics for improvements that are un-gameable as part of any pay deal, the taxpayer will not get his money’s worth except by accident. (And no, private schools are not better, because they can and do blithely exclude problematic and disabled learners, palming them back on the public system.) To start pegging performance to pay, let’s require, rather than forbid, parents and students from requesting to have or not have a particular teacher next year!

EDITOR’S NOTE: If paying for performance is going to mean anything, it has to be the sine qua non for raises – not just the cherry on top of the 2%/CPI-based raise, on top of the “step” raises based on meaningless longevity, on top of the “lane” raises for credits toward masters or doctorates that are virtually meaningless for people who teach 5th grade history or 10th grade english.

And anybody who thinks either of our current local school boards can hold anybody “to the highest standards” of teaching or school administration, or come up with and enforce “metrics for improvements that are un-gameable,” is busy bidding on oceanfront property in Wyoming.

Don’t forget the $1500 (?) possible raise for “excellence”!!

EDITOR’S NOTE: We understand it’s a $1,250 peformance bonus.

I am sick of hearing the excuse that teachers don’t get social security. Of course they don’t, they don’t pay into social security. ERGH!!!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ever wonder why court witnesses swear “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”?

It’s to keep out irrelevant tripe like “teachers don’t get Social Security.”

I would trade my social security for any teacher’s pension. Or probably any Il pensioner.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Most people would, especially considering that the teacher’s pension is guaranteed. And a decent number of private sector folks would probably take the teacher’s salary, too.

4:23:

Do you think it is an excuse or simply getting a fact on the record. Do you have any idea how many people have virtually no clue about our pension system?? Do you think it got this screwed up by the general public at large paying attention and even having a clue?? You know the general public right?? That would be the vast majority who could not even take 10 min to vote in the last election. SO how many of these folks do ya think thought teachers got a pension and SS? From my experience it is quite a few. I have had countless conversations with people who did not know that teachers do not get SS.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s an irrelevancy intentionally employed as an alibi and to distract the feeble-minded taxpayers from the windfall these teachers are getting – in addition to their upper-middle class/upper class salaries.

What part of:

>>of course they don’t get social security, they get a pension 2 to 3x social security<<

…don't you understand??

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not sure what happened with some of your typing, Anon, but we’ll attribute it to some kind of technical difficulty.

I’ll say it. *Some* teachers pay SHOULD be cut. Why should a gym teacher make over $100,000 plus lifetime benefits? Or an art teacher? Or a music teacher? These aren’t people with “special” skills. It’s not quantum physics. Would little Janey’s life turn out worse with a $55,000 gym teacher? Maybe Mommy should run her around the block once or twice?

Now, a Special Ed teacher, sure they should make more. Or a junior high math teacher, yes, they should make more.

Unions want enrollment, they don’t give a rats arse about kids education. They care about their numbers. They are in business for themselves.

I’ll never understand why public teacher is a job program for over-schooled adults, instead of 100% focused on children’s education.

Parents/voters get so conned into over-paying teachers by extraordinary amounts, that they don’t realized they have been bamboozled into larger classroom sizes, lessened class opportunity/diversity, older facilities, and no choice!

However, I don’t see how anyone can change anything. The union is so strong that they can fund their candidates and attack ones with unmatched firepower ones they don’t want in. Making matters worse, local school districts are prisoned from state laws which guarantee the ridiculous salaries/pensions.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The ONLY way to change it is for the taxpayers to elect school board members who understand that they have a DUTY to the taxpayers (as stewards of the money seized from them) and to the kids (whose education is the sole reason for the schools), which duty is far superior to anything they might owe to the teachers and administrators who are handsomely compensated to do their jobs.

Until we have school board majorities made up of people with those priorities, we’ll continue to be stuck with mediocrity (D-64) and declining quality (D-207) overseen by bobble-headed rubber-stampers of whatever they’re told by the teachers unions and the same-bed/former-teacher administrators.

Resolved: “More candidates for the local school boards should be taxpayers who have no children attending those same schools.”

Debate and discuss.

EDITOR’S NOTE: That sure couldn’t hurt.

But that still would not have eliminated (as we understand it) the likes of a Sharon Lawson and a John Heyde (currently, if not when he began his term).

There are people with kids who take the short view; only WIIFM? and people without kids who take the long view, who understand that civilized countries depend on educated, or at least semi-literate, socialized (no, not that kind of socialized) residents. Seeing how little we can pay for education and other civilized amenities is easy; look at the Deep South. That philosophy is at work there, bigtime. But getting results for decent/good pay should not be out of reach. Ken Wallace himself is cognizant that research shows seniority and advanced degrees have little correlation to talent, zeal and ability to get kids to get the message. Let’s start trying to work those metrics into reviews, and do away with the window-dressing and the placeholding as indices for raises, as they do not aid in fostering a real love of learning.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A great aphorism is: “Cheap can be expensive.” Cheap is not always good, and expensive is not always bad. But cheap and not good beats expensive and not good. Too bad that lesson seems lost on too many bureaucrats and elected officials.

Anon at 3:39, hard to tell if you’re responding to my debate topic, and if so, whether you’re arguing the affirmative or the negative. Buried in there somewhere, though, seems to be the assumption that “taxpayers who have no children attending those same schools” means people who would cut budgets. Not necessarily so. In fact, you could have a district resident who works at the schools, or is connected to the teachers’ union, run for school board.

So I’ll try to spark some debate by arguing the affirmative, “More candidates for the local school boards should be taxpayers who have no children attending those same schools.” Reason #1: School board members who DO send their children to these schools are put in the awkward position of balancing quality against budgets and might raise the ire of rank-and-file teachers if they vote (seemingly) against what the teachers’ unions want.

Anon 339- Heck, I’d pay the same exact amount, but do it smartly.
School choice, smaller classroom size, end tenure and quit over paying for mediocrity…those are a few good steps. What 3rd grader benefits from a master-degree education gym teacher?

Why is the public school system afraid of choice? Because, they know with choice, they’d lose big time.
Education shouldn’t be about good teaching jobs.

Banking shouldn’t be about good executive jobs, medicine shouldn’t be about ROI on a physician’s training, yada, yada.

Where are you? Education SHOULD be about good teaching jobs — and only good teachers should hold them.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not sure we follow you. Try again?

I don’t disagree with anything in your post, which kind of bothers me because I remember a time not all that long ago when the teacher wasn’t “king” but a decently-paid middle class worker who could retire before 60 with a very nice pension.

Now they (the ones in Park Ridge) get paid a bundle for working 3/4 of the year and can retire with a pension better than almost everybody else.

EDITOR’S NOTE:” That’s an irony seemingly lost on those folks who whine about the demise of the middle class, but who won’t acknowledge that much of the government employment that used to be the “middle class” is now upper class, or at least upper middle class.

How out of touch must this school board be that not even one member votes against this fiscal stupidity. And what is Watchdog’s view of its darling Mary Childers voting for it?

In its 4/1/13 post Watchdog endorsed Childers by quoting her campaign literature: “(“[S]alary increases should be based on merit” unrelated to the Consumer Price Index) suggest that she will bring some refreshing fiscal sanity to the D-207 board. That’s why we endorse her.”

In its 4/22/13 post about the 4/9 election results, Watchdog wrote: “The good news for taxpayers is that Mary C. Childers led all vote-getters, garnering 515 votes more than runner-up incumbent Margaret McGrath.”

Sounds like you got sold a bill of goods, Watchdog.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Perhaps. Whether she saying whatever she thought would get her elected back then, or was telling the truth but then drank the Kool-Aid, we aren’t sure. But it’s another disappointment that we seem to get from people who talk the talk while running for office but then don’t walk the walk after they get elected.

Isn’t that the problem with all but a few politicians universally – lying to get elected? When people comment about the apathy of the voting public, they rarely acknowlege the feeling of impotency that is pervasive in a system such as ours where your vote really doesn’t mean anything when it comes to being represented as you were promised.

They’re all playing one game, and we’re (the voting taxpapers) paying for it.

Of the many things that should change to make all goverment better and more accountable would be the right of the voters to recall any elected official who fails to vote according to his/her campaign promises.

Wisconsin did the right thing – twice.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re not too sure about recall, at least not without significant limitations, because it is a power that operates in derogation of the constitutionally provided terms of office.

But what really would “make all government better and more accountable” would be if the voters woke the heck up and started paying attention to their various governments more than just a few months before the election. And if they actually held their elected officials accountable on a daily/weekly/monthly basis by calling, writing and e-mailing them. And if they actually voted the bums out rather than let them stay around for decades, like the satanic Speaker of the Illinois House and most of his minions.

Even locally, we keep re-electing officials who perpetuate mediocrity and/or decline – as in D-64 and D-207, respectively – while increasing spending every chance they get.

For a guy who’s all about the sacred profit motive, what’s wrong with teaching being about having a good job? What do you think motivates bankers, doctors, and everybody else who works for a living? Yes, job satisfaction (whatever that means) and a job well done (now, that’s worth exploring) are important, but “a good job” typically means one that pays decently. Why should teachers be seen as evil for wanting what everybody wants — and at the top levels of the private sector, receives, even in the face of hellacious failures?

EDITOR’S NOTE: There’s nothing “sacred” about profits or the “profit motive.” Similarly, there’s nothing sacred about teaching – especially when it is as highly-compensated, as low-risk and as low-accountability as it is.

We have never viewed teachers as “evil” – only callously and cynically disingenuous when they wrap themselves in the altruistic mantle of teaching solely “for the kids” as they bank their six-figure salaries for 8-9 months work until they can retire in their 50s with a high-five or six-figure pension guaranteed by the taxpayers of this state that would require a $2.5-4 million 401(k) to throw off that kind of income.

839, the difference is that doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers and many others are not paid with taxpayers’ money. Teachers are. So as teachers strive to be paid more and more and more money, that means taxpayers are left with less and less and less money of their own.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Which also explains why government – and the use of government goods and services like like Library computers and programs, metered parking spaces, sewers, etc. – isn’t “free.”

Differentiating those paid from taxes and those paid from post-tax income is not useful. The consumer pays for it all. And many doctors and engineers are paid by taxes: It’s called the VA and Army Corps of Engineers. And that doesn’t include the doctors, engineers and bankers paid as vendors and service providers and contractors by the taxpayer. All should be held accountable for results, all should be able to live with at least moderate comfort and safety. It’s tempting to rank on those whose salaries we think we can affect, while sucking it up as we write checks for all the ones we can’t affect — or think we can’t, because they’re the sacred cow, the private sector and of course, legislation has no sway there. C’mon. It’s all fixable. It’s all changeable. And it’s all like it is by active, continuous intent.

I looked at the contract today…under District organization, teachers. The appendixes show the salary data for this fall and one year into the contract. The numbers tie with the press release.

At the entry level a teacher with BA gets a 4.1% increase between 2014-15 step 1 and 2015-2016 step 2. At the highest level the teacher gets a 4.5% increase between 2014-15 step 1 and 2015-2016 step 2. So all the cpi stuff is BS. The step increases rule just like in any form of government pay scale.

But starting at about step 5 and 6 for the two years something funny happens….the salaries start to go down between 2014-15 and 2015-16 when you go up a step. I suppose this is partly due to the extension of steps from 25 to 30 in this contract. That’s where they claim the “savings ” are.

But I doubt the teachers or the Admin(rising tide lifts all boats)

As you know the District foots the bill for the teachers payments to the pension fund and that hidden commitment has been in some of the salry numbers we see. Have they pulled that out somehow and stuck it somewhere else.

My understanding is that the District pays for all but about 0.5% of the health care expenses, lots of life insurance and all of the pension payments.

Nice package if you can get it!!

Any comments?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re not sure what you mean by: “So all the cpi stuff is BS” – because we can’t imagine the PREA negotiating a contract (a/k/a having its way with to feckless school board) where ANY financial term is “BS.”

And unless you’re pretty close to the top of the private sector food chain, those packages aren’t readily available anywhere but the public sector.