With both the Teachers Union and the Board of Education approving the tentative agreement, they have released a contract summary read by Board President Ray Millington at tonights meeting.
Year One, 2012-13
- Hard freeze [no base increase, no step, no lane]
- Retirement notice before March 1, 2013, end of career bump of 5.75% for 4 years
Year Two, 2013 – 2014
- On Schedule Teachers – $500 lump-sum stipend paid - Sept. 30, 2013 [On-Schedule - teachers with 16 or years or less service credit]
- Off-Schedule Teachers – $1,000 base salary increase effective Sept. 15, 2013 [Off-Schedule - teachers with more than 16 years service credit]
- Sept. 30, 2013 - Single lane change for eligible teachers.
- Feb. 15, 2014 – Single step increase for on-schedule teachers, without retroactive pay.
- Feb. 15, 2014 – Lane change for teachers in BA lane to a MA lane. Must be in approved Master’s program – Aggregate cost maximum of $3,200.
- Retirement notice after March 1, 2013, the increase will be for three years at 4 percent.
Year 1 and 2
- Extra-duty stipends will be frozen for both 2012-2013 and 2013-14
There are items in this summary that arouse questions. There are some things that should have been included that are not.
- In year 2, why are the highest paid teachers (off-schedule) getting a bump in pay of $1000 for the rest of their career while the lower paid teachers just get a lump-sum payment which will not be carried forward in their career. This is a slap in the face to the younger teachers, especially since the younger teachers supposedly had held their ground to support the older teachers in their bid to keep the $6292 flex spending monies [will discuss later].
- The younger teachers do get what appears to effectively be a half step raise [step raise for half the year]. Will they be using the salary schedule from the past year contract or will a new one be created with a schedule increase included to once again hide the true cost of the raise form the taxpayer as they have done in the past?
- The end of career salary inflation is at least trimmed. For those announcing retirement in year 1, the bump growth is trimmed from 26.25% to 25.06%. In year two, the bump growth will be down to 12.49%. Cutting this pension spiking in half is a good start, but needs to be ended altogether given the pension crisis we have in the State of Illinois.
The couple of major discussion points left out of the summary are as follows:
- $6292 flex spending monies. The board caved on this item between the Impasse stage and Final Best Offer stage. This money is suppose to be used to purchase health insurance, but with the rules setup in the past contract, the money is given to the teachers after tax. This allows the recipients, approximately 138, to use this money as just a salary increase and do not have to use it for healthcare. The second thing this item does is limit the districts ability to competitively bid health insurance providers. This has been brought up for years, and the union has not budged to allow cost savings in this area.
- Given the current financial difficulties, i.e. deficit spending, what will be the resulting
- class size increases?
- teachers RIFed?
The union negotiators knew there would be layoffs, but argued for higher salaries, bonuses, end of career bumps, etc. The extra costs to the district ensured more of their fellow teachers would be out out of work come summer and that it would cause higher class sizes. Why would the union leadership knowingly argue for higher class sizes? [Yes that is a rhetorical question.]
Once again, the actions of the union negotiators use the children and the younger teachers as pawns and slaves to their cause more and more taxpayer money. It is easy to see, a strike is never for the children. It’s for the adults and more specifically the union negotiators.
For an overview of the discussions of the issues during the strike, you van view presentations at 2 townhall meetings:
- http://forourchildrensfuture.com/grayslake-d46-townhall-presentation/
- http://forourchildrensfuture.com/?p=125
About Lennie Jarratt
