The New D-50 Contract:
What were they thinking?!?
In August 2004, CRAFT gave a presentation to the school board detailing our plans for defeating the November 2004 referendum. CRAFT suggested that it was time to replace school board members who put the interests of the teachers' union ahead of the community. Board members became indignant at this suggestion, assuring all present that this was nonsense.
We have since completed a review of the new contract, and regret to inform the public that our school board most certainly did put the interests of the Harvard Education Association (HEA) ahead of the community.
When the contract was announced at a school board meeting, the raises were stated as 2.57% in the first year, followed by 2.82% in the second year. These same numbers were reported in the Northwest Herald. Upon receiving a copy of the contract (pay tables here), we were not surprised to learn that the true raises were significantly higher than the advertised amounts.
In 2004, all tenured teachers will receive a 5.37% raise, unless they also get an education credit bump. With an education credit bump, tenured teachers receive between 7.92% and 8.27%. These raises are over two to three times the values stated to the public!
Next year isn't much better. In 2005, all tenured teachers will receive a 4.26% raise that can climb as high as 7.13% with an education credit bump.
There is simply no justification for this sort of misinformation. While the board might have employed some interesting new math to come up with their figures, this was clearly intended to deceive taxpayers as to the true cost of this new contract.
The new pay tables now include a "Masters + 36" column in addition to the education level pay columns from the previous contract. This new column adds a few percent (about 2.4%) to the pay of teachers who would otherwise remain in the "Masters + 30" column. This added cost only benefits the highest paid teachers in District 50.
18% Increase in
Retirement Bonus
District 50 now pays teachers a bonus of $13,000 upon retirement, up from $11,000 last year. This initially costs taxpayers $14,300, since the District also pays the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) contribution of 9.9%. A teacher can retire with this bonus as early as 55 years of age.
A retirement bonus is the tax that keeps on taxing. This payment causes a large, permanent increase in the retiree's TRS payment from the State. State TRS payments are based on the average salary of the final years of a teacher's employment. This one-time $14,300 gift can cost Illinois taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars over the life of a single teacher's retirement.
Think of it as the District's "unfunded mandate" to Springfield. Unfortunately, this is a common trick in school districts across Illinois. It is also a large contributor to the TRS's $23 billion budget shortfall.
One of the tools the D-50 school board used last year to increase administrator compensation without an embarrassing raise was to increase their "sick time" allotment to 340 days. Not surprisingly, the new teachers contract plays the same trick. What was once a 180-day limit has nearly doubled to become 340 days. At 14 days per year, it would take almost 25 years to bank this much sick time.
In essence, the board has removed all limits to sick time accumulation!
The board has added almost a full year of sick time credit allowance for every teacher in the district. Sounds expensive, doesn't it? This change alone can be as expensive as a 5-10% raise.
As if the rest of the retirement perks weren't enough, the District increased its maximum premium contribution towards retiree's health care to $12,500.
The board increased the allotment of leave time for union business from five days per year to eight. It seems the 185 days each year that teacher's aren't in the classroom just isn't enough.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the new contract is that it leaves the salaries for the 2006-2007 school year open to future negotiations. The enactment of future undetermined salaries coincides precisely with the business manager's unexplained prediction of a budget surplus becoming a budget deficit.
If history teaches us anything, it teaches that the teachers' unions will bargain based entirely on how much money is available, not how much money would be fair. This opening for further salary increases provides a perfect opportunity to funnel referendum money into teacher salaries.
By predicting a 2006-2007 budget shortfall now, the District can claim that the referendum money went to eliminate the deficit. The teachers' union can also claim that they're not the cause of the deficit prediction, since their salaries were not determined when the forecast was made.
Board members made it clear at the September 9th board meeting that they intend to assure the public that D-50's budget has no extra "fat". The new teachers' contract easily disproves this claim. The board's willful misrepresentation of the contract's raises also casts serious doubts about the integrity of the entire budgeting process. Where else is the board misleading the taxpayers?