McHenry County Blog

Here’s the press release about the teachers’ contract which the Cary School Board ratified last night:

Cary Junior High and elementary school students will get a shorted school day after Thanksgiving.

District 26 Board Ratifies Teacher Contract
November 1, 2011

The Board of Education of Cary Community Consolidated School District 26 announced today that they have ratified a tentative agreement with the Cary Education Association (CEA) addressing all issues related to a new collective bargaining agreement.

The new three-year agreement calls for:

• Reduction in teacher compensation by 3% in the 2011-2012 school year and a pay freeze in the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years.  Teachers will be permitted to change lanes and “move horizontally” on the salary schedule by taking additional course work during the contract but will not receive automatic “step” or longevity increases.
• A change in the employee insurance program. Previously, the Board paid 100% of single coverage and between 20% and 50% of family coverage depending on a teacher’s years of service in the district. Under the new agreement, the Board will pay 50% of single coverage, and between 10% and 40% of family coverage depending upon a teacher’s experience in the district.
• The school day for students has been lengthened from 5 hours and 45 minutes last year to 6 hours and 15 minutes under this new agreement. Student instructional time will be increased by 30 minutes a day over last year’s amounts. The parties expect to transition to a new daily schedule corresponding to the change in the school day after the Thanksgiving holiday.
• The tuition reimbursement program under the previous collective bargaining agreement has been eliminated from the new contract.
• The retirement program under previous contract has been eliminated. Under previous agreements, eligible employees could receive up to four years of 6% increases in their last years of employment; up to $20,000 in lump sum payments following retirement; and up to $10 a day for unused sick leave.

At the start of this school year the Board had imposed contract terms for the 2011-2012 school year which provided for reductions in pay and in the insurance program greater than those agreed to as outlined above.

Through a series of meetings with a federal mediator after the start of the school year, however, the parties were able to reach agreement on all economic and language issues for a three-year contract.

The parties expect to finalize the contract language and execute an agreement as soon as possible.

Chris Spoerl, the Board President, said,

“These negotiations have taken a long time to complete — since November 2010 in fact – in large measure because of the very serious financial challenges faced by the district. These were not easy labor talks but the board is confident that the new agreement will help put the district on a more stable financial ground for the next three years.”

The Cary School District's Administrative Office.

A press release from Cary Elementary School District 26:

Board and CEA Reach Tentative Agreement on All Issues

The Board of Education of Cary Community Consolidated School District 26 and the Cary Education Association, which represents the teachers in labor negotiations, announced today that on Wednesday evening they reached a
tentative agreement on all outstanding issues.

The parties have been in negotiations since November in an effort to reach agreement on a new contract.

The previous collective bargaining agreement expired at the start of the 2011‐2012 school years.

The terms of the contract will be presented to the teachers for ratification next week and the Board of Education soon after. Details of the agreement will be released after ratification.

= = = = =

Unlike McHenry County College, which released a summary of the contract its board will approve tonight, local school boards, such as Cary’s, won’t let taxpayers know how the bulk of their taxes will be spent.  Typically, 80% of a school district’s operating expenditures go for salaries.  Some, of course, are for non-teachers, but faculty salaries make up most of that 80%.

I cannot understand why this does not disturb more people.

Here’s what’s on the web site:

The signed copy of the press release.

Joint Press Release Cary BOE and CEA
posted 5 hours ago by Caryil d26

The Board of Education of Cary Community Consolidated School District 26 and The Cary Education Association which represents the teachers announced tonight that they have reached a tentative agreement to resolve the significant financial issues between the parties and are optimistic that they can reach full agreement on all remaining issues.

The parties are set to meet next week in an effort to reach an agreement on all remaining issues.

The details of the tentative agreement will be made after the board of education and association members have ratified it.

= = = = =

Again, I would point out that taxpayers should be able to read proposed contracts before they are ratified by thr elected representatives.  In my memory only Huntley School District 158 did so and that was for the contract before last.  That was when Larry Snow was on the school board.

Marshall Lowe put political messates on his sign on Route 14. Last week's was in support of the Distrit 26 School Board.

The teachers in Cary Grade Schools are teaching.

They could be striking as the School Board imposed a contract on them.

But, they’re not striking.

They want to talk more.

The meeting is at the Cary Junior High.

= = = = =
The message on Marshall Lowe’s sign says,

DIST 26 BOARD

FOR SOME ITS A HARD

PILL TO SWALLOW BUT

STAY THE COURSE

Wednesday was the first day of school and teachers were not striking.

They were asking for more negotiations.

Here's the entrance to the Cary Grade School District's Administration Center.

Maybe there will be a meeting next week.

A press release from Cary Elementary School District 26:

Board Imposes Last Best Offer for the Start of School

The Cary District 26 School Board regrets to announce that it has been unable to reach a negotiated agreement with the Cary Education Association (CEA) and will impose its last best contract offer at the start of the school year.

This will mean teachers will start the new school year working under the terms of the school board’s last-best contract offer.

Will Cary Grade School District 26 soon follow the example of these Huntley High School teachers?

While the CEA has repeatedly said they has no intention of striking, this is still a possibility.

By law, before striking the CEA must provide ten day’s written notice to the District.

The Board will work diligently to ensure school starts on time this year. Classes are expected to start on time on August 24.

The Board will keep the community posted on any developments.

In a skillful YouTube production, someone calling himself Drew Madigan takes on District 26 School Board member Chris Jenner in particular and the Cary School Board in general, accusing the Board of refusing to negotiate.

The Board and CEA have been in negotiations for six months for a successor labor agreement to the 2008-11 labor contract with is set to expire on August 23, 2011, the day before school starts.

After seventeen negotiating sessions—six with a federal mediator—and 8 formal offers, the Board declared an impasse on June 22m 2011.

The main unresolved issues are salary, retirement, insurance benefits and the length of the teachers’ work day.

As most people in the community know, because of a dramatic and severe financial crisis, in addition to the other cost saving measures that don’t directly affect students, in the spring of 2010, the Board was compelled to lay off 75 teachers, comprising one-third of the staff 2010-11 school year.

That move drastically increased class sizes and severely cuts special programs such as art and music.

The Board also closed a school that year and reduced administrative staff to further cut costs.

At that time the Board asked the CEA to open the teacher contract to re-negotiate salary and benefits to save teachers’ jobs and to keep class sizes at a more manageable level.

The CEA refused to consider reducing pay or to consider putting off scheduled pay raises and the Board had no choice to lay off a third of the staff.

Faced with uncertain staffing costs due to the unresolved CEA contract for the 2011/11 school year, the Board closed yet another school and made yet more administrative and teacher staffing reductions.

In these negotiations, the Board proposed a new compensation to maintain an adequate level of educational programs while balancing its budget.

From 2002 through 2010 the District consistently ran budget deficits which totally depleted it fund balances and maxed out its short-term borrowing capacity.

On the day before the Cary Grade School Board announced that it would impose its last best offer on teachers, Drew Madigan again attacks Board member Chris Jenner in a Youtube post. He apologizes to other board members for anyone who may have thought they were Tea Party members. Since it would take four board members to impose the last best offer, one might wonder if Jenner's views have become mainstream.

During this time, increases in teacher pay far exceeded that of all other employee groups, and now significantly exceeds neighboring elementary districts of comparable size, even after factoring in education and experience.

A recent study put their pay in the 94th percentile in Illinois.

While beginning salaries are are comparable to surrounding districts, salary schedule steps (built-in annual increases) are generally much larger, resulting in higher salaries for the same educational credentials for more experienced teachers.

Cary’s teachers average 15 years experience.

While the community has done its part by passing a $15 million referendum to eliminate the short-term borrowing and avoid a state takeover, the Board has focused its efforts on cost cutting.

In the last two years, it has cut costs by almost 1/3 by closing two schools, laying off administrators, teachers and support personnel, cutting special programs such as art and music, outsourcing its janitorial services, and other measures.

Having raised class sizes as high as they can reasonably go and trimming programs to the essentials, it is clear that the teachers’ salaries and benefit structure must change,

This is especially true given the decreasing state funding.

With this in mind, the Board’s last offer is for two years, and calls for:

• Salary: There is an overall salary decrease of 1.7%. This does not mean all teachers will receive a 1.7% pay cut next year. Because a very rich retirement program was in the 2008-2010 contract, eligible teachers who have worked for the district for as few as 15 years will get 6% increases in their salaries for the last four years before retirement. This benefit is grandfathered in under the terms of the 2008-11 contract. As a result 52 teachers, a full third of the teaching staff  [emphasis in the original]– will get 6% salary increases next year. Because these built-in retiree pay raises eat up so much money, the remaining staff would take pay cuts of 7.5% under the Board’s proposal.
• Retirement: Under the 2008-11 contract, eligible teachers not only receive up to four consecutive years of 6% increases in salary, they also receive $20,000 immediately after they retire and the Board is obligated to pay $10 for each day of sick leave the teacher had not used up. These benefits are expected to cot the District approximately $1.2 million over the next four years. The District has proposed eliminating these benefits for future retirees since they are exceedingly expensive for a District in as poor financial condition as is ours.
• Insurance: Under the 2008-11 contract, the Board paid 100% of the premium for single health and dental coverages for teachers and between 20% and 50% of premiums for family health and dental coverage that is in excess of of the cost of the single benefit. Each teacher also receives $50,000 in life insurance and long-term disability coverage. This benefit program has proven to be extremely costly. To help balance its budget, the District Iis offering in 2011-12 to contribute up to $7,000 toward whatever coverage the teacher elects, and in the 2012-13 school year up to $3,000 toward whatever coverage the teacher elects.
• Teachers’ Share of Pension Contributions: Teachers are obligated by law to pay 9.4% of their current salary to the Teachers Retirement System. In the past, the Board has agreed to pay 4.7% , or about half of that obligation. The Board also has its own TRS obligation for each teacher. Since the pension payment is essentially an obligation of the teacher stemming from the need to fund his or her own retirement, the Board is proposed to have each teacher pay this 4.7% beginning 2011-12.
• Length of School Day: The School Board has proposed that the work day increase from 7 to 7½ hours in order to restore student learning time to six hours. Last year student learning time was decreased to the state minimum of five hours to keep the overall teacher workday with the limits of the teacher contract then in place.

he Cary District 26 School Board sincerely appreciates the support it has received from the community, and will work diligently to keep the schools open.

The Board will also do everything it can to maintain the quality of education while living within its means.

The state of Illinois is still monitoring the District to insure we don’t slip back into a pattern of deficit spending.

We agree that balanced budgets must be maintained not only for prudent financial management, but also to help restore District programs and infrastructure once we transition through the last few years of an unsustainable cost structure.

Anyone who questions or concerns is encouraged to attend anyone of the Board’s meetings, though committee meetings are more informal in structure allowing more interaction with community members.

The meeting schedule as well as a more detailed explanation og the Board’s offer, can be referenced from the District’s web site.
= = = = =

The school board will meet tonight at 6 at Cary Middle School.

Even since the Huntley School Board decided to share teacher negotiation details with taxpayer-voters on its web site, I have been watching for some other district to follow suit.

Carpentersville District 300, which approved a contract without publishing its contents, just a summary,    More details were provided by Board member Joe Stevens.

But no contract.  The lawyers are working out details.  Check back after June 15th.

Will there be major changes between the board and union approval votes and the final version?

No way anyone outside the process will ever know.

So, imagine my surprise when the Cary Education Association decided to put up a web site and included negotiations’ details…at least from the teachers’ point of view.

Nothing wrong with that.

If the School Board would do something similar, the public might even be able to figure out what’s going on.

The top of the page on negotiations.

In a front page letter to parents and taxpayers, the teachers ask,

“While our stance has always been to remain within the guidelines of negotiations, we can no longer remain silent.

“The simple fact is that teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. How can our students achieve maximum success when the current environment is not conducive to learning? “

There’s more, of course.

The IEA local union points out that the state gives the school district “ten years” to dig out from under the financial problems.

Apparently stung by the impression that the high average salary paid to Cary Grade School Teachers, the web site extracts beginning salaries for those with bachelor’s and master’s degrees among McHenry County school districts. Those appear below:

54,749 – CHSD 155  (Cary Grove High School)

46,108 – Crystal Lake CCSD 47

45,324 – Riley CCSD 18

45,308 – Richmond-Burton HS 157

45,100 – Woodstock CUSD 200

44,590 – McHenry CHSD 156

43,378 – Nippersink SD 2

43,213 – Cary CCSD 26

42,997 – Prairie Grove CSD 46

41,664 – Marengo CHSD 154

41,237 – McHenry CCSD 15

41,000 – Johnsburg CUSD 12

39,815 – Harvard CUSD 50

39,655 – Fox River Grove CSD 3

39,530 – Huntley CUSD 158

39,271 – Marengo-Union E CSD 165

38,060 – Alden-Hebron CUSD 19

35,174 – Harrison SD 36

Always good to have more information.

There’s also a page comparing Cary Elementary School salaries to those outside of McHenry County.

The teachers’ web site reviews cost cutting since 2009.

Missing is cost increases going back to the year when the teachers’ union won a solid majority of the school board.

Governor Pat Quinn thinks that consolidating schools will save big money because fewer administrators would be required.

The average Crystal Lake High School District 155 teacher salary is $91,573.

Reading the Daily Herald article, I notice that no mention is made of equalizing up elementary school teacher salaries to the level paid by the overlying high school districts.

$68,489 is the average teacher salary in the Cary Grade School District, the one is such financial trouble recently.

All Quinn mentions is saving $100 million in administrative costs. That’s well under one-half of one percentage of what’s spent on schools in Illinois.

In Fox River Grove the average grade school teacher makes $60,507.

Pretty much peanuts, in other words.

In the Prairie Grove Elementary School District underlying Crystal Lake High School District the average salary is $59,840.

The Northwest Herald has bought into the argument, also incorrectly assume that consolidating hundreds of school districts in Illinois will save big money.

The largest of the District 155 feeder schools, Crystal Lake District 47, pays its teachers $57,788 on the average, according to the 2010 School Report Card.

“… there’s no good reason why towns such as Cary, Crystal Lake and McHenry should have separate elementary and high school districts.”

That’s what the Northwest Herald wrote Thursday.  (Look quickly.  Soon you will have to pay to see it.)

Might I suggest that a salary comparison be made?

Look what took me less than ten minutes to find.

High school salaries in District 155 are higher than those in Crystal Lake Grade School District 47, Cary Grade School District 26 and Prairie Grade School District 46.

Let me list them:

• Crystal Lake District 155 – $91,573 (412 teachers)
• Cary District 26 – $68,489 (198 teachers)
• Fox River Grove 3 – $60,507 (41 teachers)
• Prairie Grove District 46 – $59,840 (68 teachers)
• Crystal Lake District 47 – $57,788 (564 teachers)

The weighted average of grade school teachers in the three districts is $60,505.

The difference between the average weighted elementary school salary and the District 155 High School teacher’s average salary of $91,573 is $31,066.

Let’s do some multiplication.

First, let’s estimate. You know, what grade school students are taught to do.

What’s $31,000 times 900?

Hey, that’s over $25 million.

The exact figure is $27,058,486 my calculator says and it didn’t take tens of thousands of dollars paid to some Northern Illinois professors to figure that out.

So, let’s be rational and assume no teacher would be willing to take a pay cut and all grade school teachers would want to be put on the same salary schedule now enjoyed by area high school teachers.

Looking at these figures, it is hard to believe they would not expect an average raise of $31,000 if consolidation were to occur.

Now, I’ll admit that I have not made detailed comparisons to take into account the longevity bonus that high and grade school teachers get.

Maybe after making such adjustments the raise for unifying the pay schedules wouldn’t average over $31,000 a grade school teacher.

Pick your number and multiply it by 871.

Then, compare that mid-$20-some million number with the $100 million statewide savings that Quinn projects in savings from unneeded administrators.

Anyone think the savings by getting rid of redundant administrators within the Crystal Lake-Cary-Fox River Grove-Prairie Grove area would approach $25 million?

So why is the Governor proposing something that is going to cost every part of the state with both high and grade school districts big money?

Would I be being too cynical to suggest that Quinn may be trying to reward Illinois Education Association members who supported his re-election?

Would anyone think Illinois union leaders would let teachers in the same unified district be on two different pay scales?

The IEA Uniserve Directors would be knocking at school administrators’ doors the day after a merger.  Maybe before.

The entrance to Disney World's Fantasy Land looks so enticing, but what's beyond looks like a carnvial to me.

Proof is how teacher unions won’t allow a consolidated school district to use even two different pay scales.

The elementary physical education teacher that teaches kindergarten P.E. classes is on the same pay scale as the high school math and science teachers.

Only in editorial and Quinn Fantasy Land unions would be helping to save money.

The result would be teachers hearing the sound of “Ca Ching!”

Years later you would likely read editors bemoaning how this couldn’t have been foreseen.

But that’s what collective bargaining will bring if all school districts are shoved into the unit district mold.

It will be the result of collective bargaining. You know, what the fight in Madison, Wisconsin, is all about.

A "Vote Yes for Referendum" sign.

A friend of McHenry County Blog suggested readers might find it instructive to learn the number of teachers who live within the Cary Grade School District boundaries compared to those who live out of district.

A Freedom of Information request has found that of the 156 members of the Cary Education Association, 68 live in District 26, while 88 don’t.

That means over 56% live outside district boundaries and therefore don’t pay taxes imposed by the Cary Grade School Board.

Illinois Democrats run the White House and Federal government. From President Obama to David Axelrod to Rahm Emanuel, they are in control.

My list doesn’t include lesser known Valerie Jarrett and higher profile Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education and former head of the Chicago Public Schools.

Obama ran on “Hope and Change.”

What seems humorous now is how one of his campaign slogan was

“Change You Can Believe In”

The Illinois Dem Obama team went with vague promises.

It was lathered in positive language of “we need to go forward” and “Hope and Change.”

Oh yeah.

It was going to be unlike other presidencies.

It was going to be post partisan and post racial – both.

To be analogous, the group from Cary 26 making demands of the school board while dangling $4.3 million out there had similar characteristics.

They didn’t tell the truth.

They also didn’t contribute one dime of their own money or actually collect any money from anyone else.

It was all one big public relations charade.

In McHenry County, liberal Dems like Melissa Bean and Jack Franks got elected pretending to be someone she and he are not.

Bean’s votes for the public option for healthcare, then Obamacare, higher energy taxes (tax and trade) and massive debt stimulus spending are about as liberal as you can get.

Franks’ liberal votes are public record, including his automatic ones for whatever the teachers’ unions are demanding.

Franks’ co-sponsoring the law that made red light cameras legal was Democrat greed to collect more money from people, without calling it a tax.

The common denominator between the group “The Soar to Higher Ruse Heights Foundation” and Illinois Dem politics is blatant pretense.

If the individual(s) have to tell a lie, untruth or more to create the pretense, do you think they even care?

When caught they plan on calling them “misunderstandings.”

A lousy economy and unemployment in Illinois over 10% is no misunderstanding.

There is no misunderstanding how the individuals in the Cary District 26 group didn’t bother to contribute a dime or twenty bucks apiece to their own cause. No money in the bank. Just vague promises of pledges from unknown sources.

Illinois Dems have decided there is no war on terror, only an overseas contingency operation.

A fizzling economy with sustained high unemployment is a “soft recovery.”

We also, according to Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, don’t have terrorism anymore, just man-caused disasters.

If you don’t agree with this mislabeling, Obama and Illinois Dems have coined the phrase how you have “untrained ears.”

Dems didn’t bailout big overseas banks, but dealt with “toxic assets.”

I can’t recall Obama and the Dems campaigning on giving Deutsche Bank $2 billion of
bailout money.

But they did.

When small business owners can’t get a loan, it’s their own fault they don’t “Sprechen Deustch, nicht wahr?”

We can tell when the soaring Cary group play the “Sprechen Sie Deutsch” charade, just as Illinois Dems have for many years, can’t we?