Salary bumps for educators must stop

Before a recent Illinois pension law targeting pay spiking went into effect, many school districts awarded upward of 20 percent salary increases in each of the final years for an employee planning to retire. After the new law, school districts were limited to 6 percent annual increases in the final years before they got penalized, but were still free to give larger increases if they wished.

Take for example Palatine Township Elementary District 15, which for many years up until 2009 routinely awarded two or three years of between 15 percent and 20 percent increases for both teachers and administrators nearing retirement. In fact, between 2003 and 2008 two superintendents retired after each having received over $100,000 salary bumps across their final two years. One now receives about $1 million in retirement every four years, the other about $750,000.

A more recent example in District 15 shows a fourth-grade teacher retiring in 2011 with three consecutive 6 percent annual increases enabling a beginning annual retirement of nearly $82,000.

Parents routinely tell their children that just because they can do something doesn’t mean they should. The same advice should apply to school districts. Just because they can give pre-retirement salary bumps does not mean they should. Partly because of this practice, District 15 is now in a crisis situation with a dwindling fund balance.

The practice of providing pre-retirement salary bumps serves no purpose other than providing employees a more comfortable retirement. Besides stressing the pension fund at the state by having to pay out larger pensions than were intended, it also takes millions of dollars away from the classroom or other vital uses, such as a district’s fund balance. For these reasons and more, the pre-retirement salary bumps simply must stop.

Mark Evenson

Palatine