Brian Costin
Director of Government Reform

 
Since 2010, the Illinois Policy Institute has been working hard to ensure local government transparency and accountability to taxpayers. With our Local Transparency Project, we’ve been pushing school districts to post employee compensation online.
 
Employee compensation transparency is especially important when it comes time to negotiate collective bargaining agreements. Without transparency, it’s hard for citizens to understand what they are being asked to pay for.
 
With the spate of public school teachers union strikes and strike authorization votes across Illinois in recent months, this issue has even greater importance now.
 
Unfortunately, most school districts do not post teacher salaries and benefits online.
 
Thankfully, the Illinois Interactive Report Card Website provides some transparency on a number of key statistics for every public school district in Illinois, including average teacher salary. While IIRC doesn’t include other high-cost compensation items, such as health care and pension benefits, it’s a starting point for understanding teacher compensation costs that must be borne by local taxpayers.
 
Using the IIRC database, we compiled the average salary for teachers in districts that experienced recent labor unrest: