By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
You can bet Illinois’ teachers unions will soon extract as much as they can from local school officials in contract negotiations, all in the name of inflation. Contracts in more than 240 Illinois school districts are set to expire in 2022 and with inflation at a 40-year high, unions will demand big multi-year raises and other benefit hikes. Another 171 school district contracts expire in 2023.
Count on Illinois property tax bills – already the nation’s second highest – to jump as teacher salaries rise. Education costs account for about 60 to 70 percent of an Illinoisan’s property tax bill.
Don’t expect local school boards or district administrators to put up much resistance in contract negotiations. We’ve all witnessed just how little spine they’ve had over the course of the pandemic when it came to keeping schools open, remote learning, masking and other issues like critical race theory.
Weak school boards and overwhelming union bargaining powers are two of the key reasons why property taxes are so high. Illinois union powers are backed by some of the most union-friendly labor laws in the country, including the power to strike. The nation’s 11th highest teacher salaries, the country’s highest starting pensions, and additional perks like cumulative sick leave, early retirement ages and pension pickups – all add to the burden on taxpayers.
For now, we’ll focus on the biggest cost of all: salary increases. Unions will try to lock in big raises that exceed inflation. They may even add flexibility in the contract for teacher salaries to go up in case inflation soars even higher.
How do they lock in those salaries? Take a look at Lansing SD 158, one of three districts where a teachers contract is set to expire this May. The district’s current contract has run for five years, from 2018 to 2022, and in it teachers were guaranteed an automatic salary increase each year, no matter the conditions of the local economy or taxpayers’ ability to pay for them.
Those raises provided teachers with a total base salary increase of 16 percent over the period. But on top of those raises, teachers got two additional increases: one for working another year (step increases) and a second for teacher educational achievement (lane increases). Those increases meant an additional $1,000 to $2,500 added to teacher salaries.
Contracts across the state all have raises, steps and lanes like that. To see the full scope of what’s promised in teacher contracts, check out our analysis of the recent agreement in Naperville. And to see how steps and lanes work, check out our piece here.
What size raises will the Lansing teachers union try to bake in to the new contract? And for how many years? Will the people of Lansing – most of whom have no guarantees whatsoever of jobs, pay or contracts – be able to afford those increases?
Lansing residents won’t find the answers to those questions until after contract negotiations have been completed. That’s because in Illinois negotiations are done in secret.
None of the above is fair to private sector Illinoisans.
Illinois politicians have created two classes of workers. A public sector class with long-term contracts that guarantee job security, multi-year salary increases and perks, along with constitutionally-guaranteed lifetime pensions, and a second class of private sector workers that are forced to pay for the public sector, no matter the cost and no matter the conditions.
Illinoisans shouldn’t sit idly by while their local school board members bargain away the contents of their wallets. Illinois education costs, the 8th-most in the country, are already unaffordable.
Much like parents who’ve engaged in school matters during COVID, residents will want to engage in stopping their already-bloated property tax bills from inflating even more.
For more on why Illinoisans should get involved in their local school district’s decision making, read Wirepoints’ previous work:
- Illinois already spends the nation’s 8th-most on education per student.
- Illinois education spending grew 70 percent since 2007, the fastest in the nation.
- Illinois spends $6,000 more per student than Florida and yet that state performs better on national testing.
- Illinois teachers are already the nation’s 11th-highest paid.
- Illinois career teachers with 30 years or more of service retire today at an average age of 59, with starting pensions of more than $73,000.
- The median pension benefit for newly-retired Illinois teachers is the highest in the nation overall.
- Illinois teachers get more than just guaranteed raises: Understanding steps and lanes.
- Understanding a teachers contract: salary spiking, accumulated sick leave and pension pickups, and more.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
The districts who negotiated lucrative contracts for the teachers are now slashing the teacher positions in the schools and filling their classrooms to the max. What was 20 students per class is now 30. They’re also cutting the elective courses with less than 20 students who selected them. In the end, looks like the students are the ones who lose.
The School Boards should have some guts. They should tell the teachers near retirement that they’re not getting more than 2% becuase (given Ill Teacher DB pension formulas) every $1 in Wage increase costs about another $10 in total additional pension benefits. Just say NO …. and stick to ite. If they walk out, IMMEDIATELY shut down healthcare for any strikers. Then fire them and replace them.
Unless the pay raise is above 6%, the state pays not the school district. If anything the local school districts are incentivized to get the 34 year teacher off the local payroll and go and hire a new college grad.
Levy’s for 2021 Real Estate Taxes are already on the books for your 2021 tax bill due the second half of 2022. Too late to increase any requested levy for this year’s payment.
Local Governments are beginning the budgeting process for the 2023 Fiscal Year.
Now is the time to become involved in your local Elementary, Middle school and High School Districts, local Municipality, Library district & Park District and County governments.
We must learn to live within our means.
Think! It’s not illegal (yet).
Involved with your local
Governments? Lolol won’t do anything in corrupt broken Illinois.
Either leave the state. Or suffer.
That’s why the smart homeowners moved to Indiana.
Enjoy financial ruin in Illinois.
That’s all anyone can really do – you have to leave Illinois if you are tired of the taxing insanity. Better to focus your efforts on leaving than trying to change an unfixable corrupt system.
Looks like Lansing SD got a great deal considering this years raise was 2.5% when inflation is closer to 7%. I certainly wouldn’t blame the teachers when demanding more money. Everything else has gone up so why wouldn’t the cost of labor.
If anyone thinks it’s such a great deal, go and apply for a teaching position in Lansing. You’ll soon be wealthy with that starting salary of $46,540.
Let’s see…Just out of school…no 9% deduction from your paycheck for pension contribution due to “Board Paid Retirement”…no deduction from your paycheck for social security…summers off. That person with zero experience would have to earn about $58,000 in the private sector to equal the take home pay of that beginning Lansing teacher, and even then no sick day accumulation, much less vacation time, inferior retirement plan.
You were saying?
Wow!!! $58,000. I don’t understand why all of you don’t apply and become rich like a teacher.
Because I have more than zero years experience. $58K for no experience, summer off, extended holiday breaks, cashing out sick days. I’m sure recent grads do a lot worse. I’m sure companies like Salesforce and Deloitte are paying recent graduates more. This Lansing teaching prospect is more than welcome to apply for those jobs.
For the record, my inflation-adjusted starting salary (with a college degree that would be considered more marketable than an education degree) was $39,000, nearly 50% lower than today’s equivalent.
I’m sure your college degree that was more marketable than an education degree also allowed you to make way more money than those lowly teachers. Different career paths provide different outcomes. Many quality employers provide more pay and way more upside potential. Such is life.
If people think teaching is so lucrative then more people will join the ranks. Somehow I don’t think anyone on this board has that intention.
Teaching these days, like most of academia, attracts too many left wing loony ideologues. An education degree has become four years of indoctrination in social justice, dismantling white privilege, resisting systemic racism. Normal people can’t sit through 4 hours of woke indoctrination but the teaching profession attracts people who enjoy four years of it. Then, when on the job, the lone conservative who put up with four years of woke nonsense, is forced to teach it to children as part of the curriculum as required by the state or the local school boards. The shortage of teachers has nothing to… Read more »
“We can’t convince the kids we taught for 17 years to teach” is not the winning slogan those in education think it is.
Kids spend more time with teachers than anyone else, then when presented with the option to pursue the same career, say “no thanks.” At what point do we turn the mirror around on the Education Industrial Complex?
If a conservative leaning teacher shares a diverse thought (for instance, not buying into the lie that there are more than 2 sexes), in the classroom, they are reported by the students. What good little liberals we are raising in our schools, where diversity is to be praised but only if we look different but we’re all thinking alike.
Why would “anyone on this board” take a job that completely discredits their work experience?
We’re not needed anyway. Chicagoland is full of under-employed baristas with college degrees who spend more time trying to unionize Starbucks than applying for the jobs with better pay and even better labor protections that await them in Lansing.
And only work 9 months! and during those 9 months easy no stress job, in fact the only stress one would have is the lack of stress.
And when inflation was 2% and lower, were those same teachers being paid too much? You didn’t hear us clamoring for a clawback. What troubles so many of us is the sheer lack of attention to the pension crisis, the politicians doing absolutely nothing about it, and the unions piling on for more as if the sky is blue far into the horizon. No business would survive such fiscally ignorant behavior. But public sector workers and their unions ignore the laws of economic gravity, looking at taxpayers as a never ending gravy train. It’s why the revolving door is spinning… Read more »
Can there be an identifiable property tax rate which is quantifiably “unsustainable “? I believe that inflection point is the tax rate at which a median income household looking to buy a median priced home cannot qualify for a conventional mortgage loan (debt to income ratios too high). Why? Because this inability to qualify for mortgage borrowing eliminates a huge proportion of ‘demand’ pool for local residential real estate, and leaves evaluations to freefall down to prices at which commercial property buyers may profitably purchase single family homes for rental investment. Example: if principal+interest+insurance+property tax, payments on a $200,000 home… Read more »
Illinois is already at that rate.
Watch the housing market crash in Illinois with soaring interest rates + soaring property taxes and a poor job market.
How many times will the Illinois taxpayers bend over and say, “Thank you sir, may I have another.” Perhaps it’s infinite. So many excuses. “I’ll leave when my kids graduate. I’ll leave once I’m fully vested. I’ll leave when ……”. Then there are those of you thinking the next election will make things better. Let me give you a clue. It won’t. I know because for the longest time I was one of you. When there is a new mayor, a new gov, the current situation will continue. I wish I had a crystal ball to show you what Illinois… Read more »
As many times as the Kentucky taxpayers are going to bend over and say ““Thank you sir, may I have another.” I’m down to hoping a market crash so severe they have to suspend benefits payments or pay the pennies on the dollars. At least that would be “shared responsibility.” Nothing else is working.
I considered Kentucky when I left Illinois. I ruled it out rather quickly. It was obvious Kentucky would also be struggling in years to come.
That’s why Indiana is the smart choice for those leaving Illinois.
Making excuses is so Illinoisan.
When they are forced into bankruptcy and homelessness they will learn.
And if property taxes go up, rents will go up. Guaranteed. It is like a self-reinforcing cycle.
Here are all the details of Rockford Dist 205 contracts/budgets https://www.rps205.com/about-rps-205/foiapublic-information/district-reports Just click 2021-22 budget. Total EAV is still down from 2008 which was $2.85B and now $2.5B. If you notice total home values have gone nowhere but down overall except for last year. So the gap between our value and most of the rest of the country has widened. School tax rate is up from 2008 but down from its high. The district said it will keep its levy flat but because we are in a PTELL jurisdiction county they will still collect what was levied (not billed or… Read more »
Higher property taxes give teachers and admins higher salaries to pay higher property taxes.
District 121 in Gurnee is already putting a tax referendum on the ballot to pay for this. The raises approved in their union contract outpace those listed on the Lansing SD158:
2018-2019-5%-7% increase
2019-2020-4.5%-6.5% increase
2020-2021-3.75%-5.75% increase
2021-2022-3.75%-5.75% increase
2022-2023-3.75%-5.75% increase
Classified staff also received increases of 6%, 5%, 5%, 4.5%, 4.5% as well.
https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/elrb/Documents/FinalOffers/Warren-Township-High-School-District-121-Final-Public-Posting.pdf
Average teacher salary in district has gone up 21% in past five years. How many districts in IL are similar to this and how many can realistically afford it?
Thanks, Robert. Yes, we see the same contract by contract…ever-higher costs that Illinoisans simply can’t keep up with. And so they leave.
Illinois won’t turn around until public sector collective bargaining powers are reversed.
In November vote against Amendment 1 – or whatever clever name they attach to it.
It won’t fix anything, but it won’t make things worse and may send a message.
This was my favorite part. The balls to ask for not only pay increases but also have the district to pay the entire employEE pension contribution?! At least this school board understood the math. The Board continues to reject the Union’s demand for the Board to start to pay a portion of the teachers’ required contributions to the Teachers’ Retirement System (“TRS”). The Union initially demanded that the Board pay 100% of the teachers’ contributions to TRS, which amounted to an almost 10% annual increase in take-home-pay on its own. The Union has gradually reduced its demand to 2%. The… Read more »
This will return during the next CBA negotiation. They are already asking for a tax increase on the June ballot. The group funding the outreach is supported by the teachers union:
https://www.d121.org/cms/lib/IL02214492/Centricity/Domain/141/Referendum%20Question%20Slides_9.2.2021.pdf
https://www.d121.org/cms/lib/IL02214492/Centricity/Domain/141/d121%20referendum%20info%20brochure_9.29.21_v5.pdf