Lisle, Bloomingdale teacher deals exceed CPI

According to your articles about Lisle Unit District 202, and Bloomingdale Elementary District 13 teacher contracts, educators will receive cumulative increases of 11.02 percent, Lisle; and 13.57 percent, Bloomingdale over the next three years. Individual year year increases range from 3.38 percent, Lisle; to 5 percent, Bloomingdale.

Many projections of inflation and the Consumer Price Index for the next three years are in the 2.0 to 2.4 percentrange. Instead of the school boards' comparing their contract proposals to other school systems, they should be looking at the projections for the economy in general.

As a comparison, I examined the History of Cost of Living Adjustments for Social Security, ssa.gov, from 2010 through 2016. During that period, there were three years of zero percent increase, three years below 2 percent increase, and only one over 3 percent. During those seven years, the cumulative adjustment was 8.76 percent. If a school system provided a compound annual increase of 3 percent for the same period, the cumulative adjustment would be 22.99 percent.

What I see is a divergence between teacher salary increases, and those found in the rest of the economy. Taxpayers should be aware of this and question school board members before they agree to these contracts.

Mason Holmes

Glen Ellyn