Salary perks in Jersey County’s school-district contract
School-district contracts are often full of perks that taxpayers don’t realize they’re paying for.
Illinois residents pay the nation’s 10th-highest sales taxes and the second-highest property taxes. Public-employee benefits are often a significant driver of these sky-high tax bills. School-district contracts, for example, are often full of benefit perks that taxpayers don’t realize they’re paying for.
One example is Jersey County’s Community Unit School District No. 100, or CUSD 100, contract. There are a number of provisions in the current contract that allow the school district to artificially inflate salaries at the end of a teacher’s career. Among those perks are:
- Salary increases beyond the traditional step-and-lane system: Salary increases are determined by the traditional step-and-lane salary schedule. “Steps” refer to how many years a teacher has been teaching, and “lanes” refer to how much education the teacher has. The pay scale starts at $33,590 for a new teacher with a bachelor’s degree, and tops out at $70,319 for a teacher with a master’s degree, at least 32 hours of additional course work and 19 years of experience. But employees who max out on the salary schedule are eligible for an additional $1,000 salary stipend, which is then reported as creditable earnings.
- The “sick day balloon:” The district is allowed to increase accumulated sick leave before retirement by giving teachers up to an additional 180 days of sick leave during their final year of work. To qualify for the sick day “balloon,” a teacher must provide a five-year advanced notice of retirement and at the time of notice have 130 accumulated sick-leave days and at least 15 years of service with CUSD 100. Total sick leave is capped at 340 days.
Ballooned sick days are generally not eligible to convert to service credit. But they can be cashed in to boost pensionable salary.
- Cashing in unused sick days: Teachers are able to cash in their sick days upon retirement. The stipend amount is counted as creditable earnings as long as the stipend does not result in a salary increase of more than 6 percent. Any amount over a 6 percent salary increase is paid to the teacher in a lump-sum payment after the teacher retires. Sick days can be cashed in at the following rates:
- 170 sick-leave days: $1,500 stipend
- 215 sick-leave days: $1,875 stipend
- 255 sick-leave days: $2,250 stipend
- 300 sick-leave days: $2,625 stipend
- 340 sick-leave days: $3,000 stipend
Cashed-in sick days cannot also be used to add to a teacher’s service credit.
- Salary spiking: Teachers can receive a $4,050 stipend if they give the board a one year’s notice of their intent to retire and an $8,100 stipend for two year’s notice of intent to retire.
The average salary for a CUSD 100 employee today is $62,000, with the district superintendent topping the salary list at $171,000. To put that into context, the average Jersey County household earns $65,000 a year.
School districts across the state should open up their contracts and evaluate whether or not residents in their communities can afford to pay for these benefit perks.