District 158 starts year without contract

It feels a little anticlimactic in Huntley Unit District 158 these days.

Maybe I'm naive to think a new teacher contract would waltz through the door at the eleventh hour and announce, "Here I am, gentlemen."

Instead teachers started work this week without a contract and the threat of a strike hanging over the district.

Meanwhile, the sides have seemed to put the brake on negotiations just as they have become most urgent.

Two proposals are still sitting on the table: what the district calls its "last, best and final" offer and the teacher's latest counterproposal, submitted last week.

I'm glad that both the proposals have been posted online for the public to scrutinize.

The teachers' latest offer is a clear example of the principle that salary doesn't tell the whole story.

The proposal would give most teachers a 6-percent increase in the first year and 3.5-percent pay raises for two years after that.

Given just that information, it's hard to compare the two proposals. The teachers' offer would increase salaries more than district's offer in the first year but would probably raise pay less than the district's proposal in years two and three.

But when you add increases in retirement contributions to the teachers' proposal, it's clear the union's offer would be more costly than the district's across all three years.

I'd like to provide some additional context to a story that ran Sunday, a comparison of District 158 teacher salaries to those in other large suburban districts.

I noted in the story that the a comparison of McHenry County districts was inconclusive, that is, there was no clear correlation between how much a teacher earned in a district and how much revenue per student that district had.

I've had a chance to take a closer look at the numbers, and here's what I've found:

• Large McHenry County districts that paid teachers more than average had, on average, $10,100 in revenue per student.

• Districts that paid teachers less than average had $9,800 per student, or about $300 per student less than the other districts.

• Districts that paid teachers more had, on average, a smaller operating surplus per student.

• Districts that paid less had, on average, a larger operating surplus per student.

The conclusion we can draw, which wasn't readily apparent, is that the trends visible in the first comparison, which looked at schools throughout the suburbs, also apply to McHenry County.

Districts in McHenry County - like districts throughout the suburbs - that paid teachers more had more revenue and smaller surpluses, on a per-student basis.

It must be noted that the small sample size (only five districts) means our McHenry County comparison isn't as meaningful as we'd like it to be.

But at least the numbers, upon closer inspection, don't completely upend our initial observations.