Teacher pay grid bad for taxpayers

Jake Griffin's article on taxpayers covering teachers' college costs reveals just the tip of this iceberg sized problem for taxpayers.

How could so many school boards have given their employees a powerful way to increase their salaries, up to 14 percent, and ultimately their pensions? The answer is the salary grid that's in most teacher contracts and the teacher's union who have cleverly included the perk of taxpayers footing the bill for the cost of education that gives individual teachers the big increase in salary.

More education can be a good thing, but it's also an investment in the individual teachers. Why should they automatically also receive a pay increase without demonstrating that the education actually helps them be better teachers?

This is a powerful example of collective bargaining between teacher unions and school boards gone wrong. Taxpayers need to get the salary grid out of their next teacher's contract.

Willard Bishop

Barrington Hills