Jacksonville tax dollars could be spent more wisely in teacher contract
The most recent Jacksonville District 117 teacher contract contains provisions that make the deal unaffordable for a struggling community with a poverty rate of 18 percent and incomes that are well below average for the state. The two-year agreement covered August 2012 to August 2014. Pay hikes: While the district managed to coax the Jacksonville...
The most recent Jacksonville District 117 teacher contract contains provisions that make the deal unaffordable for a struggling community with a poverty rate of 18 percent and incomes that are well below average for the state. The two-year agreement covered August 2012 to August 2014.
Pay hikes: While the district managed to coax the Jacksonville Education Association into accepting a pay freeze in the first year, the second year provided regular step increases (automatic pay hikes given for seniority) of 3 percent as well as a 0.4 percent cost-of-living increase.
Last year, the teacher pay scale started at $30,959 for a beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree, and topped out at $70,833 for a teacher with a master’s degree, at least 48 hours of additional course work and 21 years of experience. According to the State Board of Education, the median teacher salary in Jacksonville is about $45,900. These are pretty good wages for the Jacksonville area, as the median household income – which includes two-earner families – is $41,228, according to the most recent U.S. Census estimates.
Health insurance: The district also offered generous health-insurance plans. The district promised to pay the full premium for individual health-care plans, and contribute the same amount ($684 per month) for those teachers who have their families on the district health-insurance plan.
Pension spiking: The contract’s worst feature may be the way that it encourages pension spiking, the practice of artificially hiking teacher pay in the last few years of his or her career. Pension benefits are based on a percentage of a teacher’s average salary during his or her last four years of teaching. By inflating a teacher’s pay during those last few years, one can manipulate the pension system to pay out larger pension benefits.
The District 117 contract spikes teacher pay in two ways: first, it includes a $4,000 retirement bonus. Second, it gives teachers a large number of sick leave days – as many as 22 days a year for teachers with 25 years of experience. Unused sick leave can be “banked” with no limits. At the end of a teacher’s career the teacher can cash in banked sick leave in excess of 170 days at a rate of $62.50 per day.
State law sets limits on how much a teacher’s pension can be spiked, but the contract is set up for teachers to take full advantage of the pension law.
Here’s an example of how this works: If a teacher is reasonably healthy, she should be able to bank about 270 days of sick leave over a 35-year career (the average teacher retires at around 60). She will be able to cash in 100 sick leave days at $62.50 per day for a payment of $6,250. That in turn will boost the teacher’s pension by as much as $1,200 per year.
By the way, those first 170 banked sick leave days aren’t lost. That same teacher can use those to buy a year of service credit from the Teachers’ Retirement System, which will increase her pension by another 2.2 percent. With a final salary of $60,000, that service credit will be worth another $1,320 every year as long as retirement lasts.
Those pension boosters add up: there are at least 100 retired Jacksonville School District employees receiving pension benefits of over $50,000 per year.
In light of these costly benefits, and the struggling community that funds them, the district would be wise to re-examine the structure of its teacher contract in upcoming negotiations.