Schools must become responsible on spending

What will it take to get our schools to adjust their spending to the new economic realities?

Many property taxpayers are already stretched to the limit and our State's pension system is seriously underfunded, but our schools continue to increase spending as if nothing has changed.

Two articles in the Dec. 10 edition of the Daily Herald highlight the problem. One covered District 46 giving “thank you” teacher's bonuses. The only teachers that didn't get them had said that they were going to retire and, as a result, were already getting 6 percent raises, in each of their last three years of service, to increase their pension payout.

The other talked about District 211 voting to raise the tax levy and hiring an auditor to explain that, if taxes went up, they were not responsible.

School finance is complicated and it is even more difficult in these challenging times. But neither of these school districts, nor for that matter our District 220, has shown either vision or the will to control their spending for their teaching staff.

When will they modify the salary grid that gives many teachers automatic annual salary increases that are over and above the overall increase that go to all teachers? When will they stop the practice of spiking salary increases in the last years of service to drive up retirement income to levels that are close to what they would be earning if they continued to work and never got these big increases?

It is too easy for the schools to say that the pensions are the state's problem. This is now painfully obvious but who is really to blame? These spending increases cannot be sustained and, for that reason, they threaten the stability of our communities and our state.

Where can we find the will to stop these dangerous spending practices? If not now when?

Willard Bishop

Barrington