From State Rep. Steve Reick:
Representative Steve Reick Helps Lead Legislative Effort to End Illinois Teacher and Substitute Teacher Shortage
Steve Reick
My office has been working with a retired teacher from Woodstock who was named one of the top ten educators in the state during his tenure.
This individual has found the process to become a substitute teacher to be tedious and extremely expensive.
Today Illinois faces a serious teacher and substitute teacher shortage, and this year I am serving as a Chief Co-Sponsor of legislation that aims to address this growing problem.
HB 5627, which received unanimous approval in the Illinois House last week, includes several provisions that seek to relieve the teacher and substitute teacher shortage in Illinois by making it easier for educators coming into Illinois from other states to obtain licensure and restructuring substitute teacher licensure requirements. HB 5627 would provide for the following:
- Full reciprocity of out-of-state applicants for an Illinois Professional Educator License, which would allow out-of-state licensed educators to teach in Illinois without meeting additional requirements
- Makes numerous changes to the Substitute Teaching License law to ease the process for out-of-state licensed teachers and retired teachers with lapsed licenses to work as substitute teachers
- Eases requirements for the timing of completion of professional development
- Retired educators could work in school districts through June 30, 2020 a total of 120 paid days or 600 paid hours each school year without infringing on earned pension benefits
- A short-term substitute teaching license would be established for individuals who hold an associate’s degree or have earned at least 60 hours toward a degree from an accredited institution of higher education
These are excellent changes that should ease the process for those who would like to teach in Illinois schools.
The standards remain high for the caliber of individual we would entrust to our public school classrooms, but much of the red tape and expense is removed. The bill has now moved to the Senate for consideration.
IEA tool! What a fool!
What Reicko-Reick isn’t telling is that the would be sub has to be politically vetted first.
Not PC? Get out!
Why don’t you do that with Insurance Companies!
Competition! And how is there a teacher shortage?
How many teachers apply for a teaching job when one comes available?
100’s in collar counties but rural is much worse because of teacher pensions that are put on the back of small communities!
That’s shrewd Reick.
Assist some retired school flunkey, to game the system in place, so he can grab a few more dollars out of the failed Public School day care system, while drawing his bloated pension.
Meanwhile, thousands of Property Taxpayers are being liquidated out of their homes by those very same school taxes.
Where did you people find this goof?
Cindy would never make it through the vetting process. She’d be dragged out of the building for saying she would show Alex Jones as current events!!!
Professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, psychologists, geologists, etc. can teach at the university level but not high school or elementary school…..ridiculous!
Not My First Rodeo? Truth sucks so bad for you that you have to attack me? Guess I rankle your craw. Good. Proves you are the idiot I had supposed you were.
What a disgraceful sellout by a rep for Woodstock, with its years of property tax rate substantially above 4% of total property value.
This plan exacerbates the problem by pandering to the 1%era, retired teachers who are public pension multimillionaires while in their early 50’s,and who own OPEBs (worth hundreds of thousands at local taxpayers expense).
Steve Reick knows better than this disgrace, and I never thought he would sell out his supporters for his personal benefit this badly.
So… what specifically do you all not like?
And if you don’t like this plan, what do YOU think we should do to address teacher (and especially sub) shortages?
Soecifically:
DefinedRetirement benefits with cola and early retirement option with pension spiking have bankrupted Woodstock d200.
Therefore, doing anything to encourage early retirement (such as making it easy to hire double dippers) is a non starter.
First, I have seen no evidence of a teacher shortage presented.
The student teacher ratios are half what they were decades past, and ancillary plus administrative staff number at public schools have skyrocketed.
The ratios of administrative, medical, quasi medical, social work, and transportation staff to students at d200 could be reduced to free up money for instructors if need be.
The teacher shortage, if one actually exists given realistic studet teacher ratios, is driven by new teachers looking at the burden of their own pension contributions largely going to fund multimillion dollar present value annuities for more senior teachers in the pipeline.
It would be good for new teacher morale if current teachers showed some willingness to compromise their own enormous pension and OPEB entitlements.
And very specifically in Woodstock D200:
There is a large population of tuition students at D200, sent from other wealthier school districts.
These tuition payments are strictly dictated by law, and
ARE FAR LESS THAN THE COST THESE TUITION STUDENTS ENGENDER.
Put another way: Woodstock D200 taxpayers are paying millions of dollars to subsidize OTHER DISTRICTS’ TAXPAYERS.
If the substantial number of teachers who are employed to service this population of NON-D200 enrollment were not employed by D200, they would be available to fill some of the alleged gaps.
Reick is also a township stooge and Trump hater.
I voted for him once … never again!
He’s a kind of ghost.
And he’s a bad tipper.
**Therefore, doing anything to encourage early retirement (such as making it easy to hire double dippers) is a non starter.**
So, basically, you’re opposed to pensions, and using this bill as an excuse to yell about pensions? And is it only the specific “double dipper” piece that you’re opposed to?
**The teacher shortage, if one actually exists given realistic studet teacher ratios, is driven by new teachers looking at the burden of their own pension contributions largely going to fund multimillion dollar present value annuities for more senior teachers in the pipeline.**
Huh? Any actual evidence for that?
I have a way to fix the teacher shortage.
Send all the illegals back to where they came from which would free up a lot of teachers.
Probably 50% just in Harvard.
@Mrs and Collimore
I don’t know about Reick, but if you want good tips, get a job in Algonquin Twp or at a Hooter’s and serve Bobby Miller.
Oops!
Maybe not so much anymore now that he doesn’t have the township’s AMEX .
I like the way you think, FedUp.
Other Suggestions:
Get rid of Drivers Ed and PE teacher positions – there are cheaper private sector alternatives for both.
Hire more lower paid staff to perform functions that don’t absolutely require a teacher, such as supervising study halls.
Eliminate the practice of allowing teachers to bank sick days so that they can retire earlier.
Consider operating schools year round, with rotating vacation schedules for students.
See a teacher? Thank all teachers! 187 days…tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock, meow, meeeeeoooooowwwwwww…
With weirdo Marxists like our very own fallen Angel teaching kids, is it any wonder why the schools are in such sad shape and their ‘products’ dumbed down so much.
Angel, I can’t wait to meet you in person on that cold, grey day in February, 2022, after who’ve been caught by the Provisionals cleaning out Chicago, hiding in a basement with two of your communist buddies.
You’ll have much to mew about, but I won’t really have much to tell you.
See a teacher? Thank all teachers! Stay tuned…tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock, meow, meow, meeeeeoooooowwwwwww…
On behalf of the entire cast of sunshine commenters and our sunshine blogger himself, we want to congratulate the members of our state Senate after giving approval today to a bill that would require public schools to teach LGBT history. We share the joy of another step forward in the appreciation and recognition of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their contribution to the history of this country and this State. Please call your state representative and ask them to support this legislation. Let’s make Illinois the second State in our nation to require an inclusive LGBT curriculum. In the meantime, stay tuned…tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock, meow, meow, meeeeeoooooowwwwwww…
this is terrible legislation, exacerbating the property tax crisis in Reick’s own District.
easy solution follows along the lines of “nurse shortage” and “doctor shortage’ reactions:
1. enable lesser-accreditation job titles to handle tasks (a la nurse practitioners) at lower cost.
2. any worker who is working is subject to contribution to the system (FICA, etc.). The PE in OPEB stands for Post Employment. If a ‘retired’ teacher wants to VOLUNTEER at no pay due to her ‘concern for the children’, fine.
3. teachers and admin who have multimillion dollar present value ‘retirement’ benefits packages are welcome to relax those entitlements in order to induce more NEW teachers to enter the system.
If taxpayers would compare and contrast nurses’ total compensation per hour worked vs. teachers’, and doctors’ vs. school administrators’, taxpayers would be horrified and wonder (rightfully) whether there will be any actual healthcare (as opposed to ‘insurance) available for their future needs.
Teachers and admin?
Consider the decline in student-teacher and student/admin ratios over the past 10 and 20 years.
Remember that these were years when new technology and the internet made many jobs obsolete and the remaining jobs were made MORE productive rather than LESS productive (that is, MORE students could be handled by one teacher given that lesson plans are administered by software programs over free Chromebooks given every student).
Reick, you have made it clear that human candidates are not motivated to represent actual people and taxpayers, but rather lobbying groups which benefit your own personal interest.