By: Mark Glennon
A new law signed Tuesday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker gives paid days off for all employees of public schools, charter schools, community colleges, and universities throughout Illinois who have to stay home because of COVID. School employees can also use the new days off if a child has to quarantine either because they were infected with COVID or were in close contact with someone who did.
That may seem reasonable on its face for teachers who exhaust their existing allotment of paid sick days because testing positive for COVID does force absence. The problem, however, is that no consideration seems to have been given to the enormous cost and abuse already associated with teacher sick days. The law could have been drafted much more tightly and fairly.
For starters, most school districts already give full-time teachers some 12 to 15 paid sick days a year according to 2021 ISBE EIS data. The new law should have required those days to be used before using the new COVID sick days.
That’s particularly true regarding last year, which the new law covers retroactively. If a teacher last year took time off for COVID but did not exhaust their sick day allotment, why the retroactive gift?
The primary reason this is important is that sick days are abused to spike pensions. The new COVID sick days are not directly pensionable, but many of them will be, indirectly, by allowing other sick days to go unused and accumulate. 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.
It’s at retirement that teachers really cash in on that accumulation. They use those unused sick days to get credit for working up to an additional two years (340 days is the equivalent of two school years). That means a fatter pension.
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.
In short, adding the COVID sick days makes it easier to reach that 340 sick days useable to spike pensions.
Another issue with the new law worth mentioning is that the new COVID sick days are available only to those who are fully vaccinated. Those who had COVID and thereby have natural immunity at least as good as vaccines provide are out of luck. It’s another example of how public authorities have, since the outset of the pandemic, disregarded the role of natural immunity.
What will that cost taxpayers? We are aware of no analysis or whether cost was even considered. Whatever. More free stuff is good, right?
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
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.
I think JB made a big mistake throwing all this free money for fake sickness at the teachers. The teachers will vote for anyone with a (D) by their name.without thinking twice. The candidate could be a convicted child molester, who sells fentanyl to children and has murdered his own parents with a machete and he will get the teacher vote as long as he has that (D). Our taxpayer money would be better spent to buy the votes of others who are not yet so reliably and thoroughly committed to destroying our democracy and grooming our kids for sex… Read more »
CPS teacher-“I have a booger hanging out of my nose,HAS to be covid so im gonna need about 2 weeks off,paid,oh,and btw,my doctor said i should go to Cancun ,itll help with my covid symptoms”!
I tried to make some comments on the Covid sick day bill on other posts. Seems there are so many other issues besides the pension enhancement issue. 1.) seems any teacher, bus driver, etc could potentially take an unlimited # of covid sick days because there’s no regulation, there’s no proof required by education employee that they or their family member has covid or has been exposed to covid. Employees can simply state any flimsy excuse and take a day, a week, a month, who knows how long off as paid covid sick days. Is each school district supposed to… Read more »
Say it isn’t so, teachers abuse sick days! Really! It’s going to be retroactive too, great deal. They’re really going to use Covid sick days first which don’t go toward pensions and save regular sick days to get a bigger pension? A lot of people screwed up when they didn’t go to work for the State of Illinois. You may hate dishonest, unfair Illinois government, but think of how well-off you’d be today if you had sucked it up and worked for them. You too could have those paychecks, perks and unrestrained Union representation.
I don’t think teachers abuse sick days in the way you’re thinking. If you follow the data, you will see most teachers rarely get sick, which is strange considering they are confined to small spaces with 20 plus individuals who can be sick at any time. I mean, look at all those unused sick days! There has always been the argument that if sick days expired (use them or lose them), that teachers would call in sick far more often. But that not only runs counter to the data, it also implies unethical behavior. “Better use this sick day before… Read more »
Can not extending this benefit to unvaccinated employees be construed as a diminishment of their pensions? This benefit effectively enhances pension benefits for one group as it impacts pensionable service. It’s not like they created a new pension tier.
A clever non-vaxxed teacher could probably fight this and win.
Enough already! Are you tired of being told to leave Illinois? Actually, the reverse is also true. Those that have moved are tired of hearing the excuses for staying in Illinois. Those of us that moved also had jobs, families, and responsibilities, yet now we sleep comfortably somewhere outside of Illinois. Join us and regain some self-respect but do it soon. That new house, located in a better climate, that would be perfect for your family is also being looked at by people from New York and California.
Outright discrimination…
Singling out one group specifically – public educators – for a benefit is unconstitutional…
That it is only available to the *fully vaccinated* makes it even worse…
This will also encourage sick time abuse, which is already rampant in government employment…
Curious- Will this apply to long covid who are vaccinated?
What about those who got covid but were not vaccinated then went and got vaccinated and get covid again called breakthrough?
Considering that every commercial you see that nothing is ever mentioned about side effects from the vaccine even pain at the injection site like all the other vaccines like for Shingles or Prevnar 20 for pneumococcal pneumonia. So if you get side effects from the Covid vaccine (according to gov’t officials there are none) would that qualify for sick days?
I don’t think anyone would have argued creating some sort of floor in which any teachers who had less accrued sick days that a certain amount would be eligible for this benefit. Three months (60 days) would have been an agreeable middle ground as teachers wouldn’t be forced to bleed through all their sick days and would be left with a sizable cushion if some other medical emergency arose in the future. Also, it would have adequately covered the most vulnerable: new teachers who haven’t worked long enough to accrue a significant amount of sick days and also happened to… Read more »
They complain about a teacher shortage, then do everything in their power to make it easier for teachers to retire early, exacerbating the aforementioned shortage.
Government controlled schools, you will teach and do as we say it’s already happening.
There are shortages despite very good pay and benefits. It’s a very tough job, especially in public schools. Society is changing and the proliferation of technology and the lack of manners and respect in society has made it much harder. This isn’t to say that the benefits, especially the pension part is out of whack. Public employee pension and benefits likely need to be trimmed or scaled back as its breaking our state. But private employers, especially those making record profits. Could be a little more generous to their employees. The corruption also is a major factor. It costs about… Read more »
So private employers should be like union employers, more generous with employees? Private employers are getting rich and not passing it on? Instead of fixing the first problem which is causing the second problem, just create another problem. The state doesn’t earn money, it lies about where it comes from and taxes us. The business can’t tax us when they run short, needs a “rainy day fund” and produces and sells a product. What do we have to show for the money we give Illinois and unions, inadequate educatioms, defiant educators? What a deal.
They are only there for the paycheck and the perks they don’t care about your kids. So yes they will do what they’re told as long as they can collect their check.
I think your statement could be said for workers at all levels almost everywhere. People have varying levels of commitment to the causes of their employer and generally give higher commitment to their own personal interests. Some will rise to the top levels because of such talent and commitment, but others rise because they are socially connected to the organization’s power structure. As an example, I used to have great admiration for some at the higher level people where I worked until I eventually learned that the 2nd-dude there was a college roommate of the top-dude. So much for my… Read more »