On Sunday, the Daily Herald editorial board took Huntley School Board 158 to the woodshed for offering salary increases so much higher than those in the private sector.
The editorial, headlined,
reality into negotiations,’
actually asked,
actually afford to pay?’
My heavens.
What a radical notion.
“We suspect that even the district’s initial offer might seem fairly generous to the average struggling taxpayer,” the editorial said. “It offered a 4.25 percent pay hike the first year and in the succeeding three years, a raise of 0.25 percent above the rate of inflation, assuming the inflation rate is between 2 and 5 percent. The district would pay 3 percent more of teachers’ health premiums.”
Two years ago this generous board gave 5.75% and 6.75% raises. Those percentages are lower than the amount payroll went up, however. And the reason is not just pupil growth requiring new teachers.
The editorial plays off a recent poll on the situation of American families by pointing out the disparity between private and public sectors, the gloomiest since 1964, the year I graduated from college. It talks about “economic dissonance.”
The words are biting:
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even a teacher to know that people with stagnant or declining wages, lost jobs and higher personal costs simply can’t afford the increasing cost of keeping the public sector in the style to which it has become accustomed.“
Wow.
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The picture on top was taken the day the new school board was sworn in. It remains the same except for Jim Carlin’s replacement by old school board president Mike Skala, who lost the election. Skala is the one dressed informally standing in front swearing in the new board members.