By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Rep. Barbara Hernandez (D-Aurora) recently pushed a new proposal that would expand paid leave benefits for Illinois teachers to include an extra week for “mental health.” Her bill would provide an additional five paid mental health days on top of the sick leave teachers already receive.
COVID is the rationale, but think of it as another pension sweetener, instead.
HB4742 Sec. 24-6.5. Mental health days. The school board of each school district shall grant full-time employees of the district 5 mental health days each school year at full pay. The employee is not required to provide a medical note or other documentation to use the mental health day. Used and uncompensated mental health days granted under this Section are not eligible for pensionable service credit under the Illinois Pension Code.
What do more sick days have to do with pension benefits, you ask? Here’s the background.
Illinois teachers already get a generous number of sick leave days. Most full-time teachers get some 12 to 15 paid sick days a year according to 2021 ISBE EIS data.
Unlike in the private sector, where sick days are usually “use it or lose it,” any unused sick days for teachers can be rolled over into future years. Teachers can accumulate up to 340 unused sick days by the end of their career.
And that’s where the value is. At retirement, teachers can turn in their unused sick leave and get credit for working up to an additional two years (340 days is the equivalent of two school years). More years worked means bigger pensions.
Rep. Hernandez says her proposed mental health days won’t count toward teachers’ pension benefits like regular unused sick days do, but that hardly matters.
Any teacher with a lick of sense will know to use up these “mental health” days first before using any of their regular sick days. That means more accumulated sick leave and more pension benefits for teachers.
A Wirepoints analysis of Teachers’ Retirement System member data found that over 70 percent of the 85,000 retirees with 20 years or more of service banked enough sick leave to receive one to two years of service credit towards their retirement benefit. That’s 170 to 340 days of banked sick leave per worker.
For a career teacher with 35 years of service credit (33 years plus two years of unused sick leave), the unused sick leave boosts her lifetime pension by about $160,000 over the course of her retirement.
In total, the average, recently-retired, career teacher can expect about $2.6 million in lifetime pension benefits.
Adding an additional five days of leave each year will make accumulating the max 340 sick leave days even easier for Illinois teachers. That means higher pension costs for taxpayers.
And that’s not to mention the direct cost of districts hiring more substitutes as teachers take advantage of their new days off.
Rep. Henandez told Mark Maxwell in a recent interview: “We were able to implement ‘student mental health days’ and after conversations with a few of my teachers, they said ‘what about us, why can’t we have mental health days?’”
That “what about us” mentality just about sums up the problem with Illinois.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Wirepoints’ Pension Solutions
- VIDEO: Three Key Pension Reforms
- COVID, crime and education draw all the attention, but Illinois pensions will still have a staggering impact in 2023
- No, Gov. Edgar, your version of “compromise” isn’t what Illinois needs.
- Six sources of Chicago Teachers Union power
- Tallying the perks in Illinois teacher contracts: guaranteed raises, sick leave, salary spiking, health insurance, generous pensions, and more
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Need mental health days for all the taxpayers that stick around and allow their wallets to be abused for decades without leaving for Texas or Tennessee. Notice how all the Illinois pensioners retire there because taxes are too high in Illinois?
Why shouldn’t teachers, their union hacks and public school administrators compensate students for their mental health setbacks? Give each student enough money to transfer to a private or charter school. Then all the lousy public school teachers could retire early and enjoy a shortened retirement due to underfunded pensions. That’ll give them a real mental health problem to endure.
Maybe a bit of a stretch, because sick days ( and now maybe 5 added mental health days) can be used to add to pension benefit, then isn’t limiting or taking away those sick days /mental health days in future an infringement on “not to be diminished” const gaurenteeted clause?
Another counter offer for the GOP: Scatter five mental health days (I’m talking ZERO school activity) throughout the school year, then tack those 5 extra days onto the school calendar. What does this get us?
1) Allows both school employees AND students five days to detox throughout the year
2) Everyone will be “fresher” during the school year
3) No learning loss from teachers being out of the classroom for mental health days
4) No concerns about finding substitute teachers, whom we’ve been told are in short supply
C’mon GOP, be smart about this…
Thinking back this certainly explains why I rarely had substitute teachers when I attended school. And the majority of my teachers were pretty good unlike some of my children’s teachers.
Issue books to the students, send the teachers home. My guess is the kids will do better.
Don’t the teachers have all summer to get their minds right?
They have all year. 5 hr work day, 9 week summer vacation, multiple holidays, spring break, winter break, conferences, weather breaks really add the the stress of teaching.
I often defend teachers when folks argue they only work 10 months a year, arguing they deserve a 2 month sabbatical after dealing with our kids. Apparently, it’s 2 months and 5 days.
The taxpayers need mental health days. The teachers, administrators, unions, lobbyists, politicians, and special interest can fund the taxpayer mental health days. The taxpayers also demand safe spaces from woke crap. And the taxpayers are requesting woke free classrooms. The taxpayers will be filing a grievance and taxpayer lobbyists are working with bought and paid for legislators to pass a taxpayer protection clause constitutional amendment to be placed on election ballots ASAP. Anyone who disagrees with any of these provisions is discriminating against marginalized taxpayers and will be subject to investigation by the US Attorney General. The taxpayers have suffered… Read more »
If this bill passes it will be about 2 seconds before all the other public sec heroes demand a similar deal. Im shocked they’re not demanding same paid covid sick day deal teaches got yet but Im sure its coming. All with zero longterm cost projects from pols for us chumbalones taxpayers
Imagine applying this to law enforcement.
“A chicken in every pot” was Herbert Hoovers campaign slogan.Judging from what ive seen of the cps teachers,Thee Jabronis slogan will be-“A large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and bread sticks in every pot for cps teachers”!!
I don’t think more mental health days will cure them.
Who is the boot licker down voting this?
sick days,mental health days,3 months off every summer?-im gonna run for the state legislature as a democrat-my campaign slogan you ask?-” teachers only work when you feel like it”!!-its cloudy?,take the day off,to hot?,you guessed it,take the day off,too much oxygen in the air,oh,ok,take that day off too!-Your next state legislator?-THEE JABRONI!!-Thank you all for your support
School districts: “There’s a substitute teacher shortage!”
Legislature: “Let’s increase the number of teacher sick days!”
Nobody asks if all the crazy # of allowed sick days/vacation days (and now metal health days?) contribute to supposed teacher shortage? What do other states, our neighboring states allow? When my kids where at cps years ago it was rediculous
GOP, are you there?! Here’s your counter offer: Only applicable for employees under a certain amount of unused sick days (say, 60).
What does this get you?
1) Demonstrates your sympathetic to the mental state of teachers
2) Shows you’re simply not the party of “no”
2) Acknowledges the added cost to both the state and local taxing bodies
3) Anyone questioning this will be forced to go on record defending not using the absurd amount of sick days already offered.
I like the way you think nixit. It would be nice if the Illinois GOP was strategic in anything they did.
Use. Your. Damn. Sick. Days.