Don’t blame pension problem on teachers

In your April 16 editorial, “Stop the pension insanity,” the Daily Herald came so close to getting it right. When talking about the people getting insane pensions you said “only 4 percent, often former administrators, collect pensions that are more than $100,000 a year.” You then document the insane issue generated by the Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 school board, which is responsible for giving former administrator Mohsin Dada (under age 60) three 22 percent raises in three years. This midlevel administrator made $341,747 in 2010. “His yearly pension is $236,904, but he is also making a $160,000 salary for another suburban district now. Are we the only ones outraged by that?”

Well stated, but three paragraphs later you say, “We know teaching is different, but there just aren’t many jobs where you’re absolutely guaranteed a bigger salary if you get an advanced degree.” In the reader’s mind you are tying this abomination of a contract that District 54 gave to this midlevel administrator to teachers.

Teachers are not the problem. The problem is the clowns we have elected in Springfield that didn’t make the scheduled annual pension payments and even borrowed money from the pension plans and the other incompetents that we have elected to school boards that give out these ghastly contracts to administrators. The common theme in all of this is that “we elected” these people.

Jack Halpin

Arlington Heights