Part 1 – Huntley Teachers’ Proposal: From Surplus to Deficit

It’s not hard to figure out what the Huntley teachers’ proposal would do to all homeowners in District 158.

Or to predict what would happen in a couple of years, if the teachers get their way:

Get ready for another
tax hike referendum.

You don’t even need to be a Certified Public Accountant to figure this out.

Outside auditors have certified how much was in the bank at the end of last June

The district also has a budget this year. It shows how much more money will be added to the last year’s surplus.

When you add the two together and realize that some of the funds have legal restrictions on their use (Social Security and pension funds, for example, but even they are subject to manipulation), you end up with about $17 million that could be spent on teacher salaries. This might be a bit on the high side, but it’s good for the analysis I’m doing. (You can see $16.4 million if you click on the image above. I found it on page 3 of the audit.)

Below you can see the detail found on page 27 of the audit document (type in 27 in the search engine at the top of the pdf screen). It is on page 8. The total title is “Statement of Revenues Received/ Revenues, Expenditures/ Disbursed/ Expenditures, Other Financing Sources (Uses) and Changes in Fund Balance.” Add the totals up and they come to $17 million.



Just looking at the cost of the union-requested pay raises and health benefit increases, about $10 million would disappear from that balance the first year of the contract.

That would leave an ending balance of about $7 million the end of June 2009.

The cost would be more than $10 million the second contract year, because salaries would be higher than they would be in the first year.

That would put the district a couple of million in the hole, probable more.

That means it’s time to start thinking about another tax hike referendum.

Tomorrow, details of the biggest costing demands.

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There is a resource on teacher salaries posted by the Family Taxpayers Network. You can see some of what is there below:

Besides having the salaries of every teacher in Illinois, it also has a section in which salary increases are calculated for individual teachers and administrators. You can see from the image above what happened in the Huntley School District from 1998-99 through 2004-5. Unfortunately, the data provides no information for the current 2-year contract.


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