Letters: Warped thinking on teacher shortages

Recently the Daily Herald published two articles about a teacher shortage issue in Illinois. The first one on March 3 is titled "Report: Illinoisans are worried about teacher shortages" and the second one on March 4 is titled "$70M to boost teacher staffing."

In the first article administrators from Batavia Unit District 101 and Indian Prairie District 204 both complain about how difficult it has been to hire enough teachers to meet their requirements.

However, both districts offer "early retirement incentives" to encourage their most experienced teachers to retire early by offering pension spikes in their last years of employment along with lump sum payments. Section 10.6 of the District 101 teachers' contract clearly states: "The Board shall offer a Retirement Incentive Plan to educators." So these districts - as with most school districts in northern Illinois - are complaining about a teacher shortage while at the same time encouraging experienced teachers to retire early.

In the second article, Gov. Pritzker is proposing a $70 million grant program in each of the next three years to help school districts facing the greatest teacher shortages. Yet in 2019 he too encouraged experienced teachers to take an early retirement by raising the cap on pension spikes for teachers from 3% to 6%.

So just as the school district administrators complain about a teacher shortage in their districts while offering experienced teachers financial incentives to retire early, we have a governor who makes the same complaint about teacher shortages after he offered experienced teachers even more incentive to take an early retirement.

One would think we should offer incentives for experienced teachers to stay in their profession longer instead of offering them incentives to take an early retirement. Then again, this is Illinois, The Land of Warped Logic.

Ken Hofrichter