He sees District 214 numbers differently

Ms. Cooper’s Neighbor Fencepost article (“D214 prudent with taxpayer money,” March 3) does not quite add up. She states that 2 percent of the D214 employees make $120K or more. According to the ISBE website there are 88 employees in D214 in this range. That would mean there are 4,400 total employees in D214. However, when I contacted the HR Dept. at D214 I was told D214 has approximately 1,700 employees. Quite a discrepancy.

This then brings into question the creditability of the average D214 employee annual salary of $65,000. One thing I am certain of is that teachers and administrators salaries account for the majority of the salary budget. And, according to the Illinois Interactive Report Card, the average D214 teacher salary is $91,997 and the average administrator salary is $146,754.

Ms. Cooper also states, “In the past two years all employees took pay freezes on base salary for at least one year”. After checking the Family Taxpayers Foundation website (linked to the ISBE website) I matched the first 57 names listed for 2009 and 2010. Six had the same pay, 44 had pay increases, and 7 had pay decreases. Overall, there was a salary increase of 2.9 percent for these 57. Not sure how that can be considered a pay freeze.

Ms. Cooper proclaims the board has balanced operating budgets for the last 16 years. The term “balanced budget” for a school district is a misnomer. Would a school district have a balanced budget if they had to bear the responsibility for the spiked pensions that they so readily pass on to all of the state’s taxpayers? I doubt if D214 could — they ranked 14th highest in the state with an average retiree pension of $68,817 in 2009.

Ken Hofrichter

Elk Grove Village