The Daily Herald
hits another one out of the park. Below is a perfect example of how school boards continue to cheat taxpayers out of their hard earned dollars. School boards should not be allowed to pass these back door referenda without voter approval.
Refinancing will cost Dist. 15 taxpayers
By Ethan Grove
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Saturday, March 04, 2006
Restructuring Palatine Township Elementary District 15’s debt, which also will provide $5 million for life-safety improvements, will cost residents an additional $11.5 million over five years.
That figure — which includes $5 million in principal, the costs of restructuring about $5.5 million in debt, and fees and interest — was presented by David Schott and Ivan Samstein of LaSalle Bank to the school board Friday night during a special meeting for residents to comment on and ask questions about the refinancing.
The $11.5 million would be paid at about $2.3 million annually starting in 2021, Schott and Samstein said. All figures are subject to change until the deal is finalized.
District 15 is currently paying $4.9 million — which will remain consistent until 2020 — for a portion of its debt.
The board voted 4-3 at its Feb. 8 meeting for the restructuring, which will extend its debt five years.
Some residents who spoke at Friday’s meeting were in favor of refinancing, while some were opposed to it, and others wanted to know how much it would cost taxpayers.
The district’s life-safety survey results put a series of repairs into three categories — A, B and C, with A being mandatory and urgent — to be completed over about 10 years.
The A list projects are estimated to cost about $1.3 million, and the board voted in December to change the tax levy to move about 5 cents from the transportation fund into the life-safety fund — for a total of about $1.7 million — to make those improvements.
The B and C repairs will need to be made at some point, but are not as urgent, board members said.
“This stuff is so complicated, and to rush it through like this is a crime,” board member Tim Millar said before the meeting. “We’re manufacturing the need instead of managing it. We do need to do these things, but the roofs aren’t collapsing today, which is why they aren’t in A.”
“My feeling is we need to do some of those B things now,” Superintendent Robert McKanna said. “We’re going to need a fair amount of money next year and the year after just for building and grounds repairs.”
Board member Wendy Rowden questioned whether now is the right time to refinance debt.
“Right now the bond rates are favorable,” board President Scott Boucher said.
The district will shift the $1.7 million from the life-safety fund into the education fund so the district can rehire some teachers and administrators, McKanna said.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Friday, March 03, 2006
State Funding, Percentage Rankings, and Choice
John Biver of the Family Taxpayer Network wrote this great piece. Yet another reason to vote no on all education referenda.
State Funding, Percentage Rankings, and Choice
By John Biver
After reading the rants of those who want ever more of your tax dollars, you may think that anyone arguing for better financial management in the public schools hates children. Actually, Illinois taxpayers love kids – and have been showing it by increasing funding at twice the rate of inflation for over twenty years. Illinois schools are not poorly funded.
First, a note about “state funding” versus “local funding.” The state maintains the ultimate responsibility for funding public schools since local governments are subject to the state.
Some would have you believe that the current system results from the state government shunning its responsibility. On the contrary, it was the citizens of the state deciding that local control of public education funding was preferable to having all decisions emanate from Springfield.
The current hullabaloo over state funding results from the simple fact that the public school establishment doesn’t like that too many local citizens are saying ‘no’ to ever increasing taxes by voting down referendums. Since local taxpayers won’t give them what they want, they turn to calling the state government bad names.
Illinois’ rankings show that Illinois schools are not poorly funded: (Source: NEA Rankings & Estimates, 2004)
Nationally, Illinois is:
* 3rd in public school revenue as a percentage of combined state and local revenues
* 11th in K-12 public school spending per student (average daily attendance)
* 14th in public school revenue per student (average daily attendance)
To view the rest of the article click here.
State Funding, Percentage Rankings, and Choice
By John Biver
After reading the rants of those who want ever more of your tax dollars, you may think that anyone arguing for better financial management in the public schools hates children. Actually, Illinois taxpayers love kids – and have been showing it by increasing funding at twice the rate of inflation for over twenty years. Illinois schools are not poorly funded.
First, a note about “state funding” versus “local funding.” The state maintains the ultimate responsibility for funding public schools since local governments are subject to the state.
Some would have you believe that the current system results from the state government shunning its responsibility. On the contrary, it was the citizens of the state deciding that local control of public education funding was preferable to having all decisions emanate from Springfield.
The current hullabaloo over state funding results from the simple fact that the public school establishment doesn’t like that too many local citizens are saying ‘no’ to ever increasing taxes by voting down referendums. Since local taxpayers won’t give them what they want, they turn to calling the state government bad names.
Illinois’ rankings show that Illinois schools are not poorly funded: (Source: NEA Rankings & Estimates, 2004)
Nationally, Illinois is:
* 3rd in public school revenue as a percentage of combined state and local revenues
* 11th in K-12 public school spending per student (average daily attendance)
* 14th in public school revenue per student (average daily attendance)
To view the rest of the article click here.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Yet another reason to vote no on referenda. Officials try to reform complicated state- funded pension system
The story below appeared in The Southern
Officials try to reform complicated state- funded pension system
BY JIM MUIR and Caleb Hale
The SOUTHERN
Perhaps the best word to describe the myriad of state-funded pension systems in Illinois is "complicated."
The state has 15 retirement systems. All but two are set up to allow employees to mix services from different government agencies such as school districts, universities and other state employment. The retirement plan also allows an employee to move his or her years of service into the most lucrative plan available in order to garner the highest possible monthly pension.
In other words, there are numerous loopholes state employees can and do use to pad retirement benefits.
Jon Bauman, executive director of the State Teacher's Retirement System, recently discussed a retirement package that will pay James Hintz, a financial officer at Adlai Stevenson High School, more than $200,000 annually as long as he lives. Hintz received end-of-career stipends and pay raises of more than $100,000, which ballooned his final year salary that is used to determine his pension benefits.
Bauman called the retirement package "legal, but devious."
"In Mr. Hintz's case, the district has taken a small opening and driven a truck right through it," Bauman said.
And driving a truck through a small opening has been a common practice of schools and a drain on taxpayers for years according to Becky Carroll, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rod Blagojevich. However, Carroll says new pension reform measures adopted by the Illinois General Assembly last session will put a stop to the end-of-career pay hikes designed to significantly boost the final pension benefits for teachers and administrators, that leave the state solely responsible for covering those benefit increases.
In some of the most egregious cases, these end-of-career increases have boosted salaries anywhere from 40 to 60 percent, sometimes doubling salaries, Carroll said.
A recent story in the Chicago Sun-Times reported some of the more glaring pension "sweeteners" that resulted in huge costs to taxpayers backed up Carroll's assertion the loopholes in the pension systems are being exploited.
The story reported Arlington Heights Superintendent Robert Howard received pay raises of $78,370 over the last two years prior to retirement, plus $45,500 for 91 sick days. In the Palatine Township Elementary District Superintendent John G. Conyers received a 60 percent salary increase over his last four years prior to retirement. This boosted his final pay to $350,000.
And in the New Trier Township High School District, Superintendent Henry Bangser received a series of 20 percent pay increases over his last five years before retirement, nearly doubling his salary to an estimated $346,000, not including other bonuses he was set to receive.
"Taxpayers are already paying incredibly high real estate taxes to cover school funding but some of these folks act like there is this hidden pot of money in Springfield," Carroll said. "And as long as the local school district isn't paying for it, then its okay."
Under terms of the new legislation that will go into effect in 2006, there will be a cap on salary increases at six percent which Carroll says will save the state billions of dollars over the life of the 1995 pension funding plan.
This means if school districts vote to increase salaries above the six percent cap, taxpayers of that district will be responsible for covering any of those additional costs. The legislation also eliminates the use of lump sum awards from unearned sick leave for pension credit beyond what is normally earned for contracts signed after the effective date of the legislation. This will also provide significant fiscal relief to the state, Carroll said. Additionally, a moratorium is now in place on any new benefits without a full funding source.
Carroll said another sweeping reform will take place in what is labeled as the 'alternative formula.' She said this formula was created for individuals in state law enforcement and correctional officers and other special risk jobs.
"Because the individuals in these positions operate in dangerous and life threatening situations, they deserve a more generous pension benefit," Carroll said. "This formula has been expanded through the years to include too many administrative positions that do not meet this kind of criteria."
Carroll said the new legislation will exclude all future hires in certain administrative positions that currently participate in this formula.
A pair of retirement agreements recently approved by two area community college boards has raised some eyebrows throughout the region.
The John A. Logan College Board, by a 5-1 vote, recently approved an early retirement for longtime JALC President Robert Mees - albeit a short retirement.
Under terms of the unique agreement, Mees will retire effective Sept. 30 and then be rehired Dec. 1 at a reduced salary. When the deal was approved by the board it was announced Mees will draw a salary of $78,750. The board, however, failed to specify that the $78,750 amount is only for the seven month period between Dec. 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006. Beginning July 1, 2006 Mees will be paid $140,400 annually for a two-year contract.
Mees defended the agreement calling it "a positive thing."
"It's allowed us to approve a $4 increase for students in tuition, instead of a $7 increase," Mees said. "Our main focus was not to impact the students that much and not impact programming. It's a way to benefit the college."
Don Brewer of Carbondale has been on the JALC board for 32 years and cast the lone dissenting vote. Brewer emphasized that his vote was not against Mees or his fellow trustees.
"It was an honest difference of opinion," Brewer said. "It wasn't a sweetheart deal, but nonetheless, I felt it was professionally and ethically wrong and couldn't condone it. It was the most difficult vote I've had to make."
Brewer said Mees is one of the best presidents in the college's history.
"Bob and I are good friends and have discussed this," Brewer said. "Bob's intentions were honorable, and so were those of the board, which wanted to save money and looked at the bottom line."
College officials said Mees' contract change is part of an overall plan to cut back on upper administrative expenses while at the same time benefiting students and instructional programs on campus. The board also emphasized the total savings gained is $230,000. However, the brunt of that savings doesn't come from the Mees retirement package and instead comes from the elimination of three other administrative positions that had a combined annual salary of $210,000.
Mees was making $178,039 prior to his retirement meaning that he will draw 85 percent of that amount ($151,300) in an annual pension. Coupled with the newly negotiated salary of $140,400, taxpayers will foot the bill for a total annual salary of more than $290,000 for Mees.
The Rend Lake College Board also approved a unique pay hike/retirement package for two longtime administrators earlier this year.
The board approved pay hikes totaling more than $46,000 for its two top administrators, President Mark Kern and Vice President of Finance and Administration Robert Carlock. The 20 percent pay increase came after the two longtime RLC employees announced prolonged retirement plans. Kern will retire on June 30, 2008, while Carlock plans to retire on Dec. 31, 2007. The pay hike will raise Kern's salary from $128,109 to $153,730 and Carlock's from $103,604 to $124,324. Not factoring in any future pay raises the increase will raise Kern's pension by about $22,000 per year and Carlock's pension by $17,000 per year.
Noting Kern is the longest-serving president in the history of the college, board chairman Randall Crocker said the pay increases are justified and actually brought the two administrators much closer to industry standards for community college administrators. Kern has served as president for 14 years and has 36 years with the Ina-based community college.
"There are a lot of ways to look at it but when you look at the numbers statewide they (Kern and Carlock) are both far below salary-wise what those positions pay," Crocker said. "Throughout the years they have always taken a modest pay increase and this just gets them closer to what everybody else is making."
The average salary for community college presidents statewide in 2004 is nearly $146,000 while those holding the same position as Carlock average a salary of $100,000, according to statistics released by the Illinois Community College Board. Prior to the salary hike, 31 of 39 college presidents in Illinois made more annually than Kern and 18 of 34 holding the same position as Carlock made more money.
Factoring in the increase, Kern is now the 12th highest paid community college president and Carlock is the third highest paid dean of finance.
The state contributes $10 million annually to fund the pensions and health benefits of retired lawmakers or their surviving spouses - a number that is expected to increase dramatically during the next decade, according to state officials.
Each member of the General Assembly with 20 years or more of service receives health insurance free while others are pro-rated based on the amount of years of service they had. Each member is required to pay for each dependent.
Legislators who have 20 years of service can draw a pension of 85 percent of their final salary.
Factoring in an automatic 3 percent increase each year, state records show that more than half of the 250 retired lawmakers are currently paid more annually in their respective pensions than the final salary they received as a state legislator.
According to state records former Sen. William L. O'Daniel of Mount Vernon was drawing a salary of $57,619 when he lost a re-election bid in 2002. O'Daniel is currently receiving a monthly pension of $5,309 or $63,715 per year.
Regardless of previous salary the pension amount is based on the final salary and allows employees to take an average of the top four years from the final 10 years of employment.
Along with feeling a financial strain, the pension system for retired legislators is also open to loopholes - a practice that has been referred to as 'double-dipping.' And several lawmakers have taken advantage of those loopholes.
As an example, former Sen. Jim Rea of Christopher retired in 1999 with 20 years in the General Assembly. According to state records, in 2004 Rea received a pension of $5,752 a month or $69,024 a year.
However, when Rea left the General Assembly he wasn't through working for the state. Only weeks after resigning his Senate seat, Rea was hired by longtime friend and political ally Secretary of State Jesse White as a contractual employee who is paid an additional $5,000 monthly. His total yearly income from the state is $129,024.
Former Gov. Jim Edgar is also taking advantage of the process. Edgar draws two state-funded salaries that more than double what he made as governor. Edgar's state pension is $9,411 per month or $112,937 annually. After Edgar left office he was hired by the University of Illinois, where he is paid $152,000 annually as a lecturer. In all, Edgar makes $264,937 per year.
Illinois lawmakers can retire at age 55 with eight years of service or at age 62 with four years of service. The retirement benefit is based on the last day of service, another loophole that many lawmakers used to their advantage.
As an example, former Sen. Larry Woolard retired last year after more than 18 years in the General Assembly and was immediately appointed by Gov. Blagojevich to head up the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development.
According to state records Woolard's final base salary as a state senator was $57,619. Based on his 18½ years of service Woolard's final salary would have resulted in a monthly pension of $3,841 or $46,095 annually. However, since being appointed to his new position - a position with an annual salary of $100,000 - his pension will now be 85 percent of that amount. And Woolard would only be required to work 12 months in his new position in order to be eligible for the increased benefit.
The increase will bump Woolard's annual pension to $85,000 or nearly $40,000 per year more than he would have received if he had remained in the General Assembly.
Former U.S. Glenn Poshard retired last July as vice chancellor at SIUC and receives a pension based on his $162,000 annual salary. According to state guidelines, Poshard receives 75 percent of his final salary, or $121,500.
State records also show that Poshard is listed as an inactive member of the General Assembly Retirement System, where he has 84 months of accrued service. Based on those 84 months, Poshard would also be able to draw 23 percent from his final salary as a state legislator and will also draw a federal pension from his 10 years as a U.S. Representative.
All state workers in Illinois can qualify for a pension that equals 75 percent of the average salary they earned during four of the last 10 years they worked on a job but must have 30 years total to receive the full benefit.
Legislators and judges must work only 20 years to receive a maximum benefit of 85 percent of their final salary.
The state's convoluted pension system has been under-funded since its inception in 1970. Despite a constitutional guarantee, state lawmakers didn't make the required contribution to the pensions a single time during a 25-year span. In fact, the state not only didn't pay enough to cover the annual contribution, it didn't pay enough to cover the interest.
In 1995, the General Assembly attempted to address this problem - a $19 billion deficit in the pension systems- -and passed legislation requiring the state to make annual contributions. The legislation also required the state to continue to make the normal annual contribution on top of repaying this debt. This debt repayment plan would stretch out over 50 years - through 2045.
The new legislation didn't change anything regarding the pension systems as the state failed to make contributions. Between 1995 and 2003 the state's liability increased an additional $24 billion bringing the total amount the pension system is under-funded to $43 billion.
Carroll listed four examples why the state's pension liability grew by another $24 billion from the time 1995 law was passed to 2003:
· Pension "sweeteners" added $5.8 billion to the pension liability during this time - and were added without a revenue source in which to pay for them.
· An early retirement incentive package passed in 2003, ended up costing the state $1.8 billion more than was expected when the initiative was passed.
· The state's annual contributions were $10.6 billion short from 1995 thru 2003.
· Investment losses, despite generous gains in the late 1990s, added $6.4 billion to our pension liability between 1995 and 2003.
Carroll said when Blagojevich took office in 2003 the state's pension system was the worst funded in the nation and steps were taken to "stop the bleeding."
"The governor worked to get a $10 billion Pension Obligation Bond passed to help shore up the pension funds and ensure that the state would make its required contribution to the pension system for the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years," Carroll said.
Carroll said when Blagojevich took office the state's pension system was only 48 percent funded and it has now increased to 61 percent funded, however that's still worst in the nation.
"That's just how bad things were," Carroll said. "People want to criticize the legislation that was passed in terms of pensions, but the governor and the Democratic leaders looked at this as a unique opportunity to pass something rather than do nothing. What we got passed is still the most significant pension reform ever passed in the state. When it's all said and done, we still save more than $2 billion through pension reform."
- Caleb Hale contributed to this report
writeon1@shawneelink.net
Officials try to reform complicated state- funded pension system
BY JIM MUIR and Caleb Hale
The SOUTHERN
Perhaps the best word to describe the myriad of state-funded pension systems in Illinois is "complicated."
The state has 15 retirement systems. All but two are set up to allow employees to mix services from different government agencies such as school districts, universities and other state employment. The retirement plan also allows an employee to move his or her years of service into the most lucrative plan available in order to garner the highest possible monthly pension.
In other words, there are numerous loopholes state employees can and do use to pad retirement benefits.
Jon Bauman, executive director of the State Teacher's Retirement System, recently discussed a retirement package that will pay James Hintz, a financial officer at Adlai Stevenson High School, more than $200,000 annually as long as he lives. Hintz received end-of-career stipends and pay raises of more than $100,000, which ballooned his final year salary that is used to determine his pension benefits.
Bauman called the retirement package "legal, but devious."
"In Mr. Hintz's case, the district has taken a small opening and driven a truck right through it," Bauman said.
And driving a truck through a small opening has been a common practice of schools and a drain on taxpayers for years according to Becky Carroll, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rod Blagojevich. However, Carroll says new pension reform measures adopted by the Illinois General Assembly last session will put a stop to the end-of-career pay hikes designed to significantly boost the final pension benefits for teachers and administrators, that leave the state solely responsible for covering those benefit increases.
In some of the most egregious cases, these end-of-career increases have boosted salaries anywhere from 40 to 60 percent, sometimes doubling salaries, Carroll said.
A recent story in the Chicago Sun-Times reported some of the more glaring pension "sweeteners" that resulted in huge costs to taxpayers backed up Carroll's assertion the loopholes in the pension systems are being exploited.
The story reported Arlington Heights Superintendent Robert Howard received pay raises of $78,370 over the last two years prior to retirement, plus $45,500 for 91 sick days. In the Palatine Township Elementary District Superintendent John G. Conyers received a 60 percent salary increase over his last four years prior to retirement. This boosted his final pay to $350,000.
And in the New Trier Township High School District, Superintendent Henry Bangser received a series of 20 percent pay increases over his last five years before retirement, nearly doubling his salary to an estimated $346,000, not including other bonuses he was set to receive.
"Taxpayers are already paying incredibly high real estate taxes to cover school funding but some of these folks act like there is this hidden pot of money in Springfield," Carroll said. "And as long as the local school district isn't paying for it, then its okay."
Under terms of the new legislation that will go into effect in 2006, there will be a cap on salary increases at six percent which Carroll says will save the state billions of dollars over the life of the 1995 pension funding plan.
This means if school districts vote to increase salaries above the six percent cap, taxpayers of that district will be responsible for covering any of those additional costs. The legislation also eliminates the use of lump sum awards from unearned sick leave for pension credit beyond what is normally earned for contracts signed after the effective date of the legislation. This will also provide significant fiscal relief to the state, Carroll said. Additionally, a moratorium is now in place on any new benefits without a full funding source.
Carroll said another sweeping reform will take place in what is labeled as the 'alternative formula.' She said this formula was created for individuals in state law enforcement and correctional officers and other special risk jobs.
"Because the individuals in these positions operate in dangerous and life threatening situations, they deserve a more generous pension benefit," Carroll said. "This formula has been expanded through the years to include too many administrative positions that do not meet this kind of criteria."
Carroll said the new legislation will exclude all future hires in certain administrative positions that currently participate in this formula.
A pair of retirement agreements recently approved by two area community college boards has raised some eyebrows throughout the region.
The John A. Logan College Board, by a 5-1 vote, recently approved an early retirement for longtime JALC President Robert Mees - albeit a short retirement.
Under terms of the unique agreement, Mees will retire effective Sept. 30 and then be rehired Dec. 1 at a reduced salary. When the deal was approved by the board it was announced Mees will draw a salary of $78,750. The board, however, failed to specify that the $78,750 amount is only for the seven month period between Dec. 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006. Beginning July 1, 2006 Mees will be paid $140,400 annually for a two-year contract.
Mees defended the agreement calling it "a positive thing."
"It's allowed us to approve a $4 increase for students in tuition, instead of a $7 increase," Mees said. "Our main focus was not to impact the students that much and not impact programming. It's a way to benefit the college."
Don Brewer of Carbondale has been on the JALC board for 32 years and cast the lone dissenting vote. Brewer emphasized that his vote was not against Mees or his fellow trustees.
"It was an honest difference of opinion," Brewer said. "It wasn't a sweetheart deal, but nonetheless, I felt it was professionally and ethically wrong and couldn't condone it. It was the most difficult vote I've had to make."
Brewer said Mees is one of the best presidents in the college's history.
"Bob and I are good friends and have discussed this," Brewer said. "Bob's intentions were honorable, and so were those of the board, which wanted to save money and looked at the bottom line."
College officials said Mees' contract change is part of an overall plan to cut back on upper administrative expenses while at the same time benefiting students and instructional programs on campus. The board also emphasized the total savings gained is $230,000. However, the brunt of that savings doesn't come from the Mees retirement package and instead comes from the elimination of three other administrative positions that had a combined annual salary of $210,000.
Mees was making $178,039 prior to his retirement meaning that he will draw 85 percent of that amount ($151,300) in an annual pension. Coupled with the newly negotiated salary of $140,400, taxpayers will foot the bill for a total annual salary of more than $290,000 for Mees.
The Rend Lake College Board also approved a unique pay hike/retirement package for two longtime administrators earlier this year.
The board approved pay hikes totaling more than $46,000 for its two top administrators, President Mark Kern and Vice President of Finance and Administration Robert Carlock. The 20 percent pay increase came after the two longtime RLC employees announced prolonged retirement plans. Kern will retire on June 30, 2008, while Carlock plans to retire on Dec. 31, 2007. The pay hike will raise Kern's salary from $128,109 to $153,730 and Carlock's from $103,604 to $124,324. Not factoring in any future pay raises the increase will raise Kern's pension by about $22,000 per year and Carlock's pension by $17,000 per year.
Noting Kern is the longest-serving president in the history of the college, board chairman Randall Crocker said the pay increases are justified and actually brought the two administrators much closer to industry standards for community college administrators. Kern has served as president for 14 years and has 36 years with the Ina-based community college.
"There are a lot of ways to look at it but when you look at the numbers statewide they (Kern and Carlock) are both far below salary-wise what those positions pay," Crocker said. "Throughout the years they have always taken a modest pay increase and this just gets them closer to what everybody else is making."
The average salary for community college presidents statewide in 2004 is nearly $146,000 while those holding the same position as Carlock average a salary of $100,000, according to statistics released by the Illinois Community College Board. Prior to the salary hike, 31 of 39 college presidents in Illinois made more annually than Kern and 18 of 34 holding the same position as Carlock made more money.
Factoring in the increase, Kern is now the 12th highest paid community college president and Carlock is the third highest paid dean of finance.
The state contributes $10 million annually to fund the pensions and health benefits of retired lawmakers or their surviving spouses - a number that is expected to increase dramatically during the next decade, according to state officials.
Each member of the General Assembly with 20 years or more of service receives health insurance free while others are pro-rated based on the amount of years of service they had. Each member is required to pay for each dependent.
Legislators who have 20 years of service can draw a pension of 85 percent of their final salary.
Factoring in an automatic 3 percent increase each year, state records show that more than half of the 250 retired lawmakers are currently paid more annually in their respective pensions than the final salary they received as a state legislator.
According to state records former Sen. William L. O'Daniel of Mount Vernon was drawing a salary of $57,619 when he lost a re-election bid in 2002. O'Daniel is currently receiving a monthly pension of $5,309 or $63,715 per year.
Regardless of previous salary the pension amount is based on the final salary and allows employees to take an average of the top four years from the final 10 years of employment.
Along with feeling a financial strain, the pension system for retired legislators is also open to loopholes - a practice that has been referred to as 'double-dipping.' And several lawmakers have taken advantage of those loopholes.
As an example, former Sen. Jim Rea of Christopher retired in 1999 with 20 years in the General Assembly. According to state records, in 2004 Rea received a pension of $5,752 a month or $69,024 a year.
However, when Rea left the General Assembly he wasn't through working for the state. Only weeks after resigning his Senate seat, Rea was hired by longtime friend and political ally Secretary of State Jesse White as a contractual employee who is paid an additional $5,000 monthly. His total yearly income from the state is $129,024.
Former Gov. Jim Edgar is also taking advantage of the process. Edgar draws two state-funded salaries that more than double what he made as governor. Edgar's state pension is $9,411 per month or $112,937 annually. After Edgar left office he was hired by the University of Illinois, where he is paid $152,000 annually as a lecturer. In all, Edgar makes $264,937 per year.
Illinois lawmakers can retire at age 55 with eight years of service or at age 62 with four years of service. The retirement benefit is based on the last day of service, another loophole that many lawmakers used to their advantage.
As an example, former Sen. Larry Woolard retired last year after more than 18 years in the General Assembly and was immediately appointed by Gov. Blagojevich to head up the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development.
According to state records Woolard's final base salary as a state senator was $57,619. Based on his 18½ years of service Woolard's final salary would have resulted in a monthly pension of $3,841 or $46,095 annually. However, since being appointed to his new position - a position with an annual salary of $100,000 - his pension will now be 85 percent of that amount. And Woolard would only be required to work 12 months in his new position in order to be eligible for the increased benefit.
The increase will bump Woolard's annual pension to $85,000 or nearly $40,000 per year more than he would have received if he had remained in the General Assembly.
Former U.S. Glenn Poshard retired last July as vice chancellor at SIUC and receives a pension based on his $162,000 annual salary. According to state guidelines, Poshard receives 75 percent of his final salary, or $121,500.
State records also show that Poshard is listed as an inactive member of the General Assembly Retirement System, where he has 84 months of accrued service. Based on those 84 months, Poshard would also be able to draw 23 percent from his final salary as a state legislator and will also draw a federal pension from his 10 years as a U.S. Representative.
All state workers in Illinois can qualify for a pension that equals 75 percent of the average salary they earned during four of the last 10 years they worked on a job but must have 30 years total to receive the full benefit.
Legislators and judges must work only 20 years to receive a maximum benefit of 85 percent of their final salary.
The state's convoluted pension system has been under-funded since its inception in 1970. Despite a constitutional guarantee, state lawmakers didn't make the required contribution to the pensions a single time during a 25-year span. In fact, the state not only didn't pay enough to cover the annual contribution, it didn't pay enough to cover the interest.
In 1995, the General Assembly attempted to address this problem - a $19 billion deficit in the pension systems- -and passed legislation requiring the state to make annual contributions. The legislation also required the state to continue to make the normal annual contribution on top of repaying this debt. This debt repayment plan would stretch out over 50 years - through 2045.
The new legislation didn't change anything regarding the pension systems as the state failed to make contributions. Between 1995 and 2003 the state's liability increased an additional $24 billion bringing the total amount the pension system is under-funded to $43 billion.
Carroll listed four examples why the state's pension liability grew by another $24 billion from the time 1995 law was passed to 2003:
· Pension "sweeteners" added $5.8 billion to the pension liability during this time - and were added without a revenue source in which to pay for them.
· An early retirement incentive package passed in 2003, ended up costing the state $1.8 billion more than was expected when the initiative was passed.
· The state's annual contributions were $10.6 billion short from 1995 thru 2003.
· Investment losses, despite generous gains in the late 1990s, added $6.4 billion to our pension liability between 1995 and 2003.
Carroll said when Blagojevich took office in 2003 the state's pension system was the worst funded in the nation and steps were taken to "stop the bleeding."
"The governor worked to get a $10 billion Pension Obligation Bond passed to help shore up the pension funds and ensure that the state would make its required contribution to the pension system for the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years," Carroll said.
Carroll said when Blagojevich took office the state's pension system was only 48 percent funded and it has now increased to 61 percent funded, however that's still worst in the nation.
"That's just how bad things were," Carroll said. "People want to criticize the legislation that was passed in terms of pensions, but the governor and the Democratic leaders looked at this as a unique opportunity to pass something rather than do nothing. What we got passed is still the most significant pension reform ever passed in the state. When it's all said and done, we still save more than $2 billion through pension reform."
- Caleb Hale contributed to this report
writeon1@shawneelink.net
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
The Politicization of Teacher Education
The article below can be found at the website Students for Academic Freedom.
The article below points out why we must get rid of teachers colleges. The quality of education provided to the students in this country is dismal. We can improve the quality by having teachers become masters of the subjects they teach. Einstein and Feynman would not be qualified to teach physics in a high school class because they would not have a teaching degree. Would you rather have a teacher with a teaching degree teach your students or someone with a masters degree in math, biology, art, physics, english, etc teach your children? It is time to get rid of the teaching degree and move toward subject mastery to improve the quality of education in our schools.
The Politicization of Teacher Education
(The following remarks were delivered by Candace de Russy, a trustee of the State University of New York, at a panel discussion titled “Political Bias in Education Schools.” The event was sponsored by the New York Association of Scholars in New York City on May 15, 2005.)
The thoroughly politicized state of teacher education should be of grave concern to us all. Alluding to James Loewen’s book, Lies My Teacher Taught Me, education critic Sheldon Stern wrote of the danger which this poses to our society: “…[T]ruth and democratic institutions [will not] flourish if young people swallow the distortions and half-truths promoted by leftist ideologues like Loewen, who dominate the social studies establishment in our schools, the faculty in our graduate schools of education, and the history and ‘studies’ departments in our colleges and universities. Young Americans are being consciously taught to hate and be ashamed of their nation’s history and to believe that America is a uniquely evil and oppressive society.” Such indoctrination, Stern warns, is all the more “destructive” at this time of War on Terror.
Teacher colleges have long been scathingly criticized, as noted by Charles J. Sykes’s in Dumbing Down Our Kids. Critics from the 1960s onward – such as James Koerner, James Conant and Charles Silberman – characterized education curricula as “puerile, repetitious, dull,” …”stultifyingly…trivial,”…intellectually barren and professionally useless.”
But one of the first to speak out against political bias in these programs was Rita Kramer. In her 1991 study Ed School Follies, she criticized their mindless adoption of multiculturalism. This ideology, she wrote, is part of a broader movement to replace “the measurable learning of real knowledge” with “politics….” Expanding on Ms. Kramer’s point, Sykes called this fixation on racial, ethnic, and gender identities “a heavy club wielded against traditional curricula, reading lists, ability tracking, grades, standardized tests, discipline policies, and attempts to raise academic standards (which can be denounced as ethnocentric if they result in lesser rewards for any racial group).”
The virulence of classroom politics – its potential to instill resentment, divide society, and destroy self-reliance – is apparent in texts used to educate teachers in multiculturalism. One text cited in a recent study by the Pacific Research Institute instructs: “We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story.” This story, the text states, is one of “racism, sexism, and the greed of money and human labor that disguises itself as ‘globalization.’”
This is the twisted mindset so pervasive in today’s teacher colleges, which mold those who in turn mold our children and children’s children. In Sykes’s dire phrase: “Into their hands we commend our future.”
Were it not for entrenched special interest politics, the problem of teacher colleges could be solved by abolishing them. Sound teacher preparation could easily, and much more cost-effectively, be provided within traditional departments. Absent such radical restructuring, greater school choice (unlimited charter schools and school vouchers) would force those who prepare our teachers to compete and improve.
But a revolution of this sort is unfortunately glacially slow in coming.
Other solutions include calling upon governing boards to reform teacher colleges. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has launched an initiative named Trustees for Better Teachers (TBT), which I have the honor of chairing. In Teachers Who Can: How Informed Trustees Can Ensure Teacher Quality, a TBT publication by Michael Poliakoff, the group urges trustees to inquire whether textbooks used in these programs are “fair, balanced, and factual,” to obtain the data needed to assess these programs, to ensure future teachers know the subjects they will teach, to interpret state teacher certification exam results with the appropriate skepticism, to combat grade inflation, to guard against the limitations of accrediting agencies, and to distinguish “best practices from malpractice in education methods courses.”
Trustees are of course obliged and empowered by law to ensure the integrity of all curricula, including that of teacher colleges, but all too typically they elect not to do so. A primary cause of this failure is the fear of even appearing to tell professors what they can or cannot teach, of intruding upon faculty prerogatives. At the same time, however, the professoriate is largely failing to play by its own historic rules, to uphold its end of its compact with the public: While basking in the privilege of self-governance, it forsakes the public trust.
What did the profession’s own representative organization have to say on this subject? In its 1915 “Declaration of Principles” (among many other pronouncements) the AAUP warned that if the professoriate “should prove itself unwilling…to prevent the freedom which it claims…from being used…for uncritical and intemperate partisanship…it is certain that the task will be performed by others.”
But in reality governing boards shrink from confronting partisanship and ideology on campuses. Take, for example, a recent meeting of the Academic Standards Committee of the State University of New York Board of Trustees, where I repeated my essential objection to SUNY’s touted reform of its 16 teacher colleges (which, I might add, is said to educate more teachers than any other institution in the world). I reiterated that such initiatives are meaningless unless they are grounded in an honest and through assessment of the curricula (disciplinary and pedagogical) used in these programs. System Provost Peter Salins’s response to this, unchallenged by any other trustee, was: “It is not our role to critique existing programs.”
“It is not our role….” Therein why failed programs such as teacher education endure and endure. Neither faculty nor administrators nor boards are in fact in charge. No one is ensuring high curricular and other academic standards. For this reason the governance of the academy today has rightly been labeled “organized anarchy.”
Until such accountability is instituted, our future will remain in the hands of ideologues hostile to our best traditions, and this nation will remain at risk.
Candace de Russy, Ph.D., a trustee of the State University of New York, writes on educational and cultural issues.
The article below points out why we must get rid of teachers colleges. The quality of education provided to the students in this country is dismal. We can improve the quality by having teachers become masters of the subjects they teach. Einstein and Feynman would not be qualified to teach physics in a high school class because they would not have a teaching degree. Would you rather have a teacher with a teaching degree teach your students or someone with a masters degree in math, biology, art, physics, english, etc teach your children? It is time to get rid of the teaching degree and move toward subject mastery to improve the quality of education in our schools.
The Politicization of Teacher Education
(The following remarks were delivered by Candace de Russy, a trustee of the State University of New York, at a panel discussion titled “Political Bias in Education Schools.” The event was sponsored by the New York Association of Scholars in New York City on May 15, 2005.)
The thoroughly politicized state of teacher education should be of grave concern to us all. Alluding to James Loewen’s book, Lies My Teacher Taught Me, education critic Sheldon Stern wrote of the danger which this poses to our society: “…[T]ruth and democratic institutions [will not] flourish if young people swallow the distortions and half-truths promoted by leftist ideologues like Loewen, who dominate the social studies establishment in our schools, the faculty in our graduate schools of education, and the history and ‘studies’ departments in our colleges and universities. Young Americans are being consciously taught to hate and be ashamed of their nation’s history and to believe that America is a uniquely evil and oppressive society.” Such indoctrination, Stern warns, is all the more “destructive” at this time of War on Terror.
Teacher colleges have long been scathingly criticized, as noted by Charles J. Sykes’s in Dumbing Down Our Kids. Critics from the 1960s onward – such as James Koerner, James Conant and Charles Silberman – characterized education curricula as “puerile, repetitious, dull,” …”stultifyingly…trivial,”…intellectually barren and professionally useless.”
But one of the first to speak out against political bias in these programs was Rita Kramer. In her 1991 study Ed School Follies, she criticized their mindless adoption of multiculturalism. This ideology, she wrote, is part of a broader movement to replace “the measurable learning of real knowledge” with “politics….” Expanding on Ms. Kramer’s point, Sykes called this fixation on racial, ethnic, and gender identities “a heavy club wielded against traditional curricula, reading lists, ability tracking, grades, standardized tests, discipline policies, and attempts to raise academic standards (which can be denounced as ethnocentric if they result in lesser rewards for any racial group).”
The virulence of classroom politics – its potential to instill resentment, divide society, and destroy self-reliance – is apparent in texts used to educate teachers in multiculturalism. One text cited in a recent study by the Pacific Research Institute instructs: “We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story.” This story, the text states, is one of “racism, sexism, and the greed of money and human labor that disguises itself as ‘globalization.’”
This is the twisted mindset so pervasive in today’s teacher colleges, which mold those who in turn mold our children and children’s children. In Sykes’s dire phrase: “Into their hands we commend our future.”
Were it not for entrenched special interest politics, the problem of teacher colleges could be solved by abolishing them. Sound teacher preparation could easily, and much more cost-effectively, be provided within traditional departments. Absent such radical restructuring, greater school choice (unlimited charter schools and school vouchers) would force those who prepare our teachers to compete and improve.
But a revolution of this sort is unfortunately glacially slow in coming.
Other solutions include calling upon governing boards to reform teacher colleges. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has launched an initiative named Trustees for Better Teachers (TBT), which I have the honor of chairing. In Teachers Who Can: How Informed Trustees Can Ensure Teacher Quality, a TBT publication by Michael Poliakoff, the group urges trustees to inquire whether textbooks used in these programs are “fair, balanced, and factual,” to obtain the data needed to assess these programs, to ensure future teachers know the subjects they will teach, to interpret state teacher certification exam results with the appropriate skepticism, to combat grade inflation, to guard against the limitations of accrediting agencies, and to distinguish “best practices from malpractice in education methods courses.”
Trustees are of course obliged and empowered by law to ensure the integrity of all curricula, including that of teacher colleges, but all too typically they elect not to do so. A primary cause of this failure is the fear of even appearing to tell professors what they can or cannot teach, of intruding upon faculty prerogatives. At the same time, however, the professoriate is largely failing to play by its own historic rules, to uphold its end of its compact with the public: While basking in the privilege of self-governance, it forsakes the public trust.
What did the profession’s own representative organization have to say on this subject? In its 1915 “Declaration of Principles” (among many other pronouncements) the AAUP warned that if the professoriate “should prove itself unwilling…to prevent the freedom which it claims…from being used…for uncritical and intemperate partisanship…it is certain that the task will be performed by others.”
But in reality governing boards shrink from confronting partisanship and ideology on campuses. Take, for example, a recent meeting of the Academic Standards Committee of the State University of New York Board of Trustees, where I repeated my essential objection to SUNY’s touted reform of its 16 teacher colleges (which, I might add, is said to educate more teachers than any other institution in the world). I reiterated that such initiatives are meaningless unless they are grounded in an honest and through assessment of the curricula (disciplinary and pedagogical) used in these programs. System Provost Peter Salins’s response to this, unchallenged by any other trustee, was: “It is not our role to critique existing programs.”
“It is not our role….” Therein why failed programs such as teacher education endure and endure. Neither faculty nor administrators nor boards are in fact in charge. No one is ensuring high curricular and other academic standards. For this reason the governance of the academy today has rightly been labeled “organized anarchy.”
Until such accountability is instituted, our future will remain in the hands of ideologues hostile to our best traditions, and this nation will remain at risk.
Candace de Russy, Ph.D., a trustee of the State University of New York, writes on educational and cultural issues.
Another Episode of a School Employee Allegedly Gone Bad.
The story below appeared in the Chicago Tribune
on March 1, 2006. Another reason why transparency is so important in school districts. We encourage people to investigate their own school districts.
Bail set for alleged school embezzler
3/1/2006
By Tracy Dell'Angela and Jeff Coen
Chicago Tribune
While a former Chicago Public School manager remained jailed on felony theft charges Tuesday, the high school that entrusted her with its finances is struggling to recover from a loss of nearly half a million dollars.
Marilyn Jenkins-Evans, 47, was ordered held on $200,000 bail by Criminal Court Judge Thomas Hennelly, a day after she was arrested on allegations that she stole $457,000 from Simeon Career Academy High School, where she once worked as business manager. Investigators alleged that she wrote herself 319 checks, forged the former principal's signature and deposited them in her personal accounts over more than five years at the school.
"How is this school going to recoup that money?" asked the interim principal of the South Side school, Leonard Kenebrew. "That's $90,000 a year for five years. That could have been novels. Or microscopes. Or training for the teachers. Or field trips for the students. It's so depressing."
It was Kenebrew's arrival at the school that led to Jenkins-Evans' arrest. Kenebrew asked for an audit, a relative routine request when a new principal starts at a school-about the same time he started noticing some "red flags" about Simeon's bookkeeping.
At the time, Kenebrew didn't know that Jenkins-Evans was acting as the unofficial business manager at Simeon, a role she volunteered for on top of her central office duties supervising 10 regional business managers at 100 schools.
Kenebrew couldn't understand why several checks on school accounts were written out to Jenkins-Evans or why a high school would continue to hand-write checks and ledgers when computerized programs are widely used. He also realized that many bills had gone unpaid for a year or more, even when there was money in the account.
Former Principal John Everett has said he knew nothing about the missing money and trusted Jenkins-Evans to control school spending because she was an expert from the central office.
Sylvia Jones, a member of Simeon's local school council, said she too had questions about the way Simeon was spending money. But she said the former principal refused to share detailed information about school accounts. When she pressed for answers, she said, she was dismissed as a troublemaker.
District officials said they would work with law enforcement to recover any funds stolen from the school, including using forfeiture laws to seize assets from Jenkins-Evans if she is convicted. Spokesman Mike Vaughn added that the district will investigate whether Jenkins-Evans had access to funds at the dozens of other schools where she supervised business managers and if any money was misspent at these schools.
Every year, the district audits about 10 percent to 15 percent of the system's 600 schools. Last year, 50 of the 67 audits revealed that a school's financial accounting either "needed improvement" or was "out of compliance." Evidence of misappropriation is referred to the office of inspector general.
However, the district does not plan to start micromanaging the spending of funds that are raised by individual schools to pay for extras the district does not provide. The money is expected to be managed by principals, with oversight from local school councils.
At Jenkins-Evans' bond hearing, the judge said he was distressed by the betrayal alleged in this case.
"I am disturbed by the fact of her position, and the victim in this case, the schoolchildren of the city of Chicago," Hennelly said.
Assistant State's Atty. Patricia Woulfe told the judge that Jenkins-Evans admitted to the theft when she was first questioned and then later resigned her manager job.
Defense lawyer Michael J. Monaco said Jenkins-Evans has no criminal history and worked for years at a bank before working for the school district. She also is active in her church, New Heritage Cathedral on South Princeton Avenue. Pastor Katie Peecher and other parishioners came to the court hearing to support Jenkins-Evans.
"She is a wonderful woman," Peecher said. "She is not a criminal."
on March 1, 2006. Another reason why transparency is so important in school districts. We encourage people to investigate their own school districts.
Bail set for alleged school embezzler
3/1/2006
By Tracy Dell'Angela and Jeff Coen
Chicago Tribune
While a former Chicago Public School manager remained jailed on felony theft charges Tuesday, the high school that entrusted her with its finances is struggling to recover from a loss of nearly half a million dollars.
Marilyn Jenkins-Evans, 47, was ordered held on $200,000 bail by Criminal Court Judge Thomas Hennelly, a day after she was arrested on allegations that she stole $457,000 from Simeon Career Academy High School, where she once worked as business manager. Investigators alleged that she wrote herself 319 checks, forged the former principal's signature and deposited them in her personal accounts over more than five years at the school.
"How is this school going to recoup that money?" asked the interim principal of the South Side school, Leonard Kenebrew. "That's $90,000 a year for five years. That could have been novels. Or microscopes. Or training for the teachers. Or field trips for the students. It's so depressing."
It was Kenebrew's arrival at the school that led to Jenkins-Evans' arrest. Kenebrew asked for an audit, a relative routine request when a new principal starts at a school-about the same time he started noticing some "red flags" about Simeon's bookkeeping.
At the time, Kenebrew didn't know that Jenkins-Evans was acting as the unofficial business manager at Simeon, a role she volunteered for on top of her central office duties supervising 10 regional business managers at 100 schools.
Kenebrew couldn't understand why several checks on school accounts were written out to Jenkins-Evans or why a high school would continue to hand-write checks and ledgers when computerized programs are widely used. He also realized that many bills had gone unpaid for a year or more, even when there was money in the account.
Former Principal John Everett has said he knew nothing about the missing money and trusted Jenkins-Evans to control school spending because she was an expert from the central office.
Sylvia Jones, a member of Simeon's local school council, said she too had questions about the way Simeon was spending money. But she said the former principal refused to share detailed information about school accounts. When she pressed for answers, she said, she was dismissed as a troublemaker.
District officials said they would work with law enforcement to recover any funds stolen from the school, including using forfeiture laws to seize assets from Jenkins-Evans if she is convicted. Spokesman Mike Vaughn added that the district will investigate whether Jenkins-Evans had access to funds at the dozens of other schools where she supervised business managers and if any money was misspent at these schools.
Every year, the district audits about 10 percent to 15 percent of the system's 600 schools. Last year, 50 of the 67 audits revealed that a school's financial accounting either "needed improvement" or was "out of compliance." Evidence of misappropriation is referred to the office of inspector general.
However, the district does not plan to start micromanaging the spending of funds that are raised by individual schools to pay for extras the district does not provide. The money is expected to be managed by principals, with oversight from local school councils.
At Jenkins-Evans' bond hearing, the judge said he was distressed by the betrayal alleged in this case.
"I am disturbed by the fact of her position, and the victim in this case, the schoolchildren of the city of Chicago," Hennelly said.
Assistant State's Atty. Patricia Woulfe told the judge that Jenkins-Evans admitted to the theft when she was first questioned and then later resigned her manager job.
Defense lawyer Michael J. Monaco said Jenkins-Evans has no criminal history and worked for years at a bank before working for the school district. She also is active in her church, New Heritage Cathedral on South Princeton Avenue. Pastor Katie Peecher and other parishioners came to the court hearing to support Jenkins-Evans.
"She is a wonderful woman," Peecher said. "She is not a criminal."
Monday, February 27, 2006
How the Teachers Unions and Politicians work to keep one group elected and the other group millionaires in retirement.
The post below is from our friend Bill Zettler. Below you will read yet another reason to vote no on referenda. The 20 million dollars given to politicians are your tax dollars working against you. As property taxes increase, teachers unions and the like have more money to buy politcal power from the legislators. It is time for campaign reform to include no longer taking money from the teachers unions and like associations that contract with school districts and essentially the state.
How do I love thee, let me count the ways …
When poet Elizabeth Browning wrote this to her husband Robert in the 19th century she was speaking of her undying love for him.
Here in Illinois we have a similar situation except it is the politicians who are worshipping at the feet of their most prolific political lover, the teacher unions.
And it is not unrequited love either – the teacher unions love to give money to politicians (over $20 million since electronic records have been kept) who in turn give money back to them multiplied a thousand fold. Oh, how romantic! It must be political Valentines Day.
Today we have more examples of this illicit love affair and it is regarding the recently passed law limiting teacher (and administrators) raises to 6% per year over the last 4 years of their career. School districts are still allowed to the exceed 6% limit but then the district becomes responsible for the pension liability beyond the 6% meaning the local taxpayers would have to be notified that another teacher has just been made a pension millionaire at their expense. Chicago suburban school boards much prefer taxpayers in Peoria and Carbondale and other Illinois areas pay for the obscene pensions granted to their teachers. Besides if they have to pay for the pensions out of local funds they might have to cut back on the salaries and the union would not like that.
The teacher union monster has mobilized their Democratic Party storm troopers for another all-out blitzkrieg of the taxpayer’s pocketbook. Here is a sample of the current attacks on this 6% limit law. The first one, SB2158, pretty much eviscerates the original bill. The others just add a long list of excuses to ignore the intent of the law.
The funny thing is, I thought the Democrats were the party of the poor people. They certainly seem to spend an inordinate amount of time, energy and money keeping millionaires happy.
1. SB 2158 - Increases that are part of a collective bargaining agreement would be EXEMPT from the 6 percent final average salary contribution. This can occur as a result of a negotiated salary schedule based upon the completion of a master’s degree.
2. HB4160 - The legislation EXEMPTS salary paid to the Regional and Assistant Regional Superintendents by the Illinois State Board of Education. Teacher salaries that are paid by grants received from the U.S. Government would also be exempt under the legislation.
a. TRS estimates that 14,000 members are currently paid totally or partially from federal funds (full-time equivalent approximately 7,000).
b. TRS estimates that 700 members are currently Illinois State Employees. (ISBE, TRS….)
3. HB4164/SB2150 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for payments or stipends a teacher may receive from National Board certification. Teachers will receive a $1,000 if they provide 60 hours of mentoring and/or $3,000 to assist candidates teaching in academically at-risk schools or schools located in economically disadvantaged communities.
4. SB4168 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for salary increases as a result of an internal promotion for which the State Board of Education requires additional certification. Additional certifications are needed for positions such as Principal, Superintendent, and Assistant Principal. As a result, any earnings due to an internal promotion received in the final four years of service would be exempt from the 6 percent final average salary contribution.
5. HB4160 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for the following scenarios:
a. Any payment from the State of Illinois, the State Board of Education, or U.S. Government
The legislation exempts salary paid to the Regional and Assistant Regional Superintendents by the Illinois State Board of Education. Teacher salaries that are paid by grants received from the U.S. Government would also be exempt under the legislation.
b. Internal promotion that requires additional certification by the State Board of Education
Principal, Assistant Principal, and Superintendent
Accepting additional duties outside of the normal workday, as defined in the collective bargaining agreement, contract, or employers’ personnel policies.
6. SB2147 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for salary increases as a result of movement to a position of authority over others within the department, school, or district. As a result any earnings due to movement to a position of authority in the final four years of service would be exempt from the 6 percent final average salary contribution.
7. HB4166/SB 2151 - The legislation provides for the following 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTIONS:
a. National Board Certification
b. Master Certificate
c. Accepting school-sponsored or extra-curricular assignments, Coach, assistant coach, club sponsor, etc.
d. Movement to a position of authority within a department, school, or district
i. Principal, Assistant Principal, and Superintendent
e. Part-time staff increasing their workload
i. Increasing workload from 50 percent to 100 percent
f. Earned as a result of a negotiated salary schedule
i. Completion of a master’s degree resulting in a two lane increase in salary
g. As a result of the teacher
i. Accepting additional workload or accepting to tech summer school
Here’s the link on the : TRS website
How do I love thee, let me count the ways …
When poet Elizabeth Browning wrote this to her husband Robert in the 19th century she was speaking of her undying love for him.
Here in Illinois we have a similar situation except it is the politicians who are worshipping at the feet of their most prolific political lover, the teacher unions.
And it is not unrequited love either – the teacher unions love to give money to politicians (over $20 million since electronic records have been kept) who in turn give money back to them multiplied a thousand fold. Oh, how romantic! It must be political Valentines Day.
Today we have more examples of this illicit love affair and it is regarding the recently passed law limiting teacher (and administrators) raises to 6% per year over the last 4 years of their career. School districts are still allowed to the exceed 6% limit but then the district becomes responsible for the pension liability beyond the 6% meaning the local taxpayers would have to be notified that another teacher has just been made a pension millionaire at their expense. Chicago suburban school boards much prefer taxpayers in Peoria and Carbondale and other Illinois areas pay for the obscene pensions granted to their teachers. Besides if they have to pay for the pensions out of local funds they might have to cut back on the salaries and the union would not like that.
The teacher union monster has mobilized their Democratic Party storm troopers for another all-out blitzkrieg of the taxpayer’s pocketbook. Here is a sample of the current attacks on this 6% limit law. The first one, SB2158, pretty much eviscerates the original bill. The others just add a long list of excuses to ignore the intent of the law.
The funny thing is, I thought the Democrats were the party of the poor people. They certainly seem to spend an inordinate amount of time, energy and money keeping millionaires happy.
1. SB 2158 - Increases that are part of a collective bargaining agreement would be EXEMPT from the 6 percent final average salary contribution. This can occur as a result of a negotiated salary schedule based upon the completion of a master’s degree.
2. HB4160 - The legislation EXEMPTS salary paid to the Regional and Assistant Regional Superintendents by the Illinois State Board of Education. Teacher salaries that are paid by grants received from the U.S. Government would also be exempt under the legislation.
a. TRS estimates that 14,000 members are currently paid totally or partially from federal funds (full-time equivalent approximately 7,000).
b. TRS estimates that 700 members are currently Illinois State Employees. (ISBE, TRS….)
3. HB4164/SB2150 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for payments or stipends a teacher may receive from National Board certification. Teachers will receive a $1,000 if they provide 60 hours of mentoring and/or $3,000 to assist candidates teaching in academically at-risk schools or schools located in economically disadvantaged communities.
4. SB4168 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for salary increases as a result of an internal promotion for which the State Board of Education requires additional certification. Additional certifications are needed for positions such as Principal, Superintendent, and Assistant Principal. As a result, any earnings due to an internal promotion received in the final four years of service would be exempt from the 6 percent final average salary contribution.
5. HB4160 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for the following scenarios:
a. Any payment from the State of Illinois, the State Board of Education, or U.S. Government
The legislation exempts salary paid to the Regional and Assistant Regional Superintendents by the Illinois State Board of Education. Teacher salaries that are paid by grants received from the U.S. Government would also be exempt under the legislation.
b. Internal promotion that requires additional certification by the State Board of Education
Principal, Assistant Principal, and Superintendent
Accepting additional duties outside of the normal workday, as defined in the collective bargaining agreement, contract, or employers’ personnel policies.
6. SB2147 - The legislation provides a 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTION for salary increases as a result of movement to a position of authority over others within the department, school, or district. As a result any earnings due to movement to a position of authority in the final four years of service would be exempt from the 6 percent final average salary contribution.
7. HB4166/SB 2151 - The legislation provides for the following 6 percent final average salary employer contribution EXEMPTIONS:
a. National Board Certification
b. Master Certificate
c. Accepting school-sponsored or extra-curricular assignments, Coach, assistant coach, club sponsor, etc.
d. Movement to a position of authority within a department, school, or district
i. Principal, Assistant Principal, and Superintendent
e. Part-time staff increasing their workload
i. Increasing workload from 50 percent to 100 percent
f. Earned as a result of a negotiated salary schedule
i. Completion of a master’s degree resulting in a two lane increase in salary
g. As a result of the teacher
i. Accepting additional workload or accepting to tech summer school
Here’s the link on the : TRS website
Sunday, February 26, 2006
“Pre-School for All” Isn’t Just Expensive, It Doesn’t Work Either
The policy analysis below was written by The Illinois Policy Institute.
PRE-SCHOOL FOR ALL FALLS SHORT
“Pre-School for All” Isn’t Just Expensive, It Doesn’t Work Either
(Springfield, Ill.) “Pre-school for All” is expensive, ineffectual and probably inappropriate. Yet, one wouldn’t have known it, listening to the Governor’s February 15 budget address. Early childhood education in Illinois should be expanded, the Governor dramatically announced.. It is proper, he declared, that state government undertake this enterprise. And he has asked the General Assembly to extend to all the state’s three-and-four year-olds access to the public education system, in the form of voluntary preschool.
Illinois would ‘lead the nation,’ in this effort. It would surpass even the expansive state-sponsored preschool programs already years underway in New York and Georgia. Illinois would be the first state, and Rod Blagojevich the first governor, to open its and his state’s doors of public schools to toddlers.
Illinois must welcome into the fold of government-education this responsibility, he said. Gone unmentioned though, was that early childhood education – especially in the form of preschool – has yet to have been proven to have the effects commonly presumed. One must trust that the governor’s office has consulted the wide and differing body of professional opinion in the matter, being as that they at least allude to “countless studies.” [1]
If this were the case, one must assume that the governor – in touting the benefits of his proposal – is not telling the whole truth. If the Governor, given his apparent passion for the issue, had undertaken to study the matter, he could not have helped but notice that Early Childhood Education is as contentious as any. “Countless,” his office has claimed, are the studies that have demonstrated the benefits of preschool. [2]
Equally numerous, though, are the claims that early formal education is ineffectual and that it can even be harmful to a child’s development. So insufficient is the evidence to support initiatives such as the governor’s, that "No authority in the field of child psychology, pediatrics, or child psychiatry
advocates formal education, in any domain, of infants and young children. In fact, the weight of solid professional opinion opposes it." [3]
To read the rest of the policy analysis go to The Illinois Policy Institute.
Please contact your representative and senator and tell them to vote "NO" on pre-school for all. If you need assistance contacting your representative or senator go to WLS Radio -- Legislative Action Center.
PRE-SCHOOL FOR ALL FALLS SHORT
“Pre-School for All” Isn’t Just Expensive, It Doesn’t Work Either
(Springfield, Ill.) “Pre-school for All” is expensive, ineffectual and probably inappropriate. Yet, one wouldn’t have known it, listening to the Governor’s February 15 budget address. Early childhood education in Illinois should be expanded, the Governor dramatically announced.. It is proper, he declared, that state government undertake this enterprise. And he has asked the General Assembly to extend to all the state’s three-and-four year-olds access to the public education system, in the form of voluntary preschool.
Illinois would ‘lead the nation,’ in this effort. It would surpass even the expansive state-sponsored preschool programs already years underway in New York and Georgia. Illinois would be the first state, and Rod Blagojevich the first governor, to open its and his state’s doors of public schools to toddlers.
Illinois must welcome into the fold of government-education this responsibility, he said. Gone unmentioned though, was that early childhood education – especially in the form of preschool – has yet to have been proven to have the effects commonly presumed. One must trust that the governor’s office has consulted the wide and differing body of professional opinion in the matter, being as that they at least allude to “countless studies.” [1]
If this were the case, one must assume that the governor – in touting the benefits of his proposal – is not telling the whole truth. If the Governor, given his apparent passion for the issue, had undertaken to study the matter, he could not have helped but notice that Early Childhood Education is as contentious as any. “Countless,” his office has claimed, are the studies that have demonstrated the benefits of preschool. [2]
Equally numerous, though, are the claims that early formal education is ineffectual and that it can even be harmful to a child’s development. So insufficient is the evidence to support initiatives such as the governor’s, that "No authority in the field of child psychology, pediatrics, or child psychiatry
advocates formal education, in any domain, of infants and young children. In fact, the weight of solid professional opinion opposes it." [3]
To read the rest of the policy analysis go to The Illinois Policy Institute.
Please contact your representative and senator and tell them to vote "NO" on pre-school for all. If you need assistance contacting your representative or senator go to WLS Radio -- Legislative Action Center.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Schools slammed for barring child
Why is it US citizens do not get school choice but illegal aliens as well as foreign students here on Visa's get school choice? The following story appeared in the February 24th, 2006 addition of the Sun-times.
Schools slammed for barring child
February 24, 2006
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter
State Board of Education officials, led by an angry Mexican-American chairman, stripped Elmwood Park School District 401 of all state funding Thursday, saying officials there had illegally asked at least two potential students about their immigration status.
The Elmwood Park district stands to lose $3.5 million of its $30 million budget this year as a result of the state board's decision to "non-recognize'' the west suburban district. That could threaten teacher pay, the district's attorney said.
In addition, the district was suspended from the Illinois High School Association, meaning its varsity boys basketball team can't play in the Class AA boys basketball tournament on Monday and its cheerleaders can't compete in the March 4 sectional competition.
For state board Chairman Jesse Ruiz, Elmwood Park's treatment of two kids -- one from Ecuador seeking high school admission, and another from the Czech Republic seeking to attend middle school -- struck close to home.
"As the son of a Mexican American who was here illegally for eight years, you would have denied me an education,'' an angry Ruiz told Elmwood Park officials during the board's monthly meeting. "You are not supposed to discriminate against any children based on any immigration status.''
Immigration questions shouldn't even be asked during enrollment, he said.
Elmwood Park District 401 attorney Jack Murphy insisted the district was merely trying to follow federal immigration laws barring a person on a temporary B-2 visa from enrolling in a school.
The federal government has been cracking down on enforcement of that provision ever since some of the 9/11 terrorists got into the United States on B-2 visas and went on to illegally take classes here, said Murphy.
"I think what [state board members] have told us today is that you can't get your state money unless you violate federal laws. We think that's wrong,'' said Murphy, an attorney with the firm of Scariano, Himes & Petrarca.
Elmwood Park has 15 days to appeal and is hoping U.S. District Judge James Holderman will rule differently next Tuesday.
The district had been on probation since December for its admission questions as well as for barring an applicant.
A 13-year-old girl from the Czech Republic was let into Elm Middle School after she sued the district and admitted her B-2 visa had expired. That meant she was covered by a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that illegal immigrants cannot be denied a public school education, Murphy said.
But the second child, a 14-year-old from Ecuador, told the district she was here legally on a B-2 visa, so she has yet to be admitted to Elmwood Park High School, Murphy said.
State board attorney Irma Martinez Snopek said the Ecuadorian girl was "terrified'' by the district's questions and fled the state.
Other students 'being punished'
"What we are trying to do is make sure there aren't other students out there who are sitting at home doing nothing because the district says they don't want to enroll them,'' Snopek said.
After the unanimous state board vote, Ruiz explained his father came to the U.S. legally to pick crops outside Milwaukee. But when the father suffered appendicitis, the farm owner wanted to "ship him to Mexico,'' so he fled to Chicago, where he lived illegally from 1947 to 1955, Ruiz said. Ruiz said he was born in the U.S. after his father returned to Mexico, then came back to the U.S. legally.
Elmwood Park's actions violate a 1982 Supreme Court ruling called Plyler v. Doe, said Ruiz, a corporate securities attorney. He learned about the 1982 case during a University of Chicago law class taught by now U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Ruiz said.
The district superintendent was trying to schedule a board meeting for today to see "what can be done to rectify the sanctions,'' said Elmwood Park High School Principal Jim Jennings. "I'm upset and disappointed in the fact that our current students are the ones being punished,'' he said.
rrossi@suntimes.com
Schools slammed for barring child
February 24, 2006
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter
State Board of Education officials, led by an angry Mexican-American chairman, stripped Elmwood Park School District 401 of all state funding Thursday, saying officials there had illegally asked at least two potential students about their immigration status.
The Elmwood Park district stands to lose $3.5 million of its $30 million budget this year as a result of the state board's decision to "non-recognize'' the west suburban district. That could threaten teacher pay, the district's attorney said.
In addition, the district was suspended from the Illinois High School Association, meaning its varsity boys basketball team can't play in the Class AA boys basketball tournament on Monday and its cheerleaders can't compete in the March 4 sectional competition.
For state board Chairman Jesse Ruiz, Elmwood Park's treatment of two kids -- one from Ecuador seeking high school admission, and another from the Czech Republic seeking to attend middle school -- struck close to home.
"As the son of a Mexican American who was here illegally for eight years, you would have denied me an education,'' an angry Ruiz told Elmwood Park officials during the board's monthly meeting. "You are not supposed to discriminate against any children based on any immigration status.''
Immigration questions shouldn't even be asked during enrollment, he said.
Elmwood Park District 401 attorney Jack Murphy insisted the district was merely trying to follow federal immigration laws barring a person on a temporary B-2 visa from enrolling in a school.
The federal government has been cracking down on enforcement of that provision ever since some of the 9/11 terrorists got into the United States on B-2 visas and went on to illegally take classes here, said Murphy.
"I think what [state board members] have told us today is that you can't get your state money unless you violate federal laws. We think that's wrong,'' said Murphy, an attorney with the firm of Scariano, Himes & Petrarca.
Elmwood Park has 15 days to appeal and is hoping U.S. District Judge James Holderman will rule differently next Tuesday.
The district had been on probation since December for its admission questions as well as for barring an applicant.
A 13-year-old girl from the Czech Republic was let into Elm Middle School after she sued the district and admitted her B-2 visa had expired. That meant she was covered by a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that illegal immigrants cannot be denied a public school education, Murphy said.
But the second child, a 14-year-old from Ecuador, told the district she was here legally on a B-2 visa, so she has yet to be admitted to Elmwood Park High School, Murphy said.
State board attorney Irma Martinez Snopek said the Ecuadorian girl was "terrified'' by the district's questions and fled the state.
Other students 'being punished'
"What we are trying to do is make sure there aren't other students out there who are sitting at home doing nothing because the district says they don't want to enroll them,'' Snopek said.
After the unanimous state board vote, Ruiz explained his father came to the U.S. legally to pick crops outside Milwaukee. But when the father suffered appendicitis, the farm owner wanted to "ship him to Mexico,'' so he fled to Chicago, where he lived illegally from 1947 to 1955, Ruiz said. Ruiz said he was born in the U.S. after his father returned to Mexico, then came back to the U.S. legally.
Elmwood Park's actions violate a 1982 Supreme Court ruling called Plyler v. Doe, said Ruiz, a corporate securities attorney. He learned about the 1982 case during a University of Chicago law class taught by now U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Ruiz said.
The district superintendent was trying to schedule a board meeting for today to see "what can be done to rectify the sanctions,'' said Elmwood Park High School Principal Jim Jennings. "I'm upset and disappointed in the fact that our current students are the ones being punished,'' he said.
rrossi@suntimes.com
Don’t keep what wasn’t in the asking
The below editorial appeared in the Daily Herald. The Daily Herald is head and shoulders above all newspapers when it comes to investigating education issues. This article speaks for itself. Until loop holes are closed to protect taxpayers all referenda must be voted down.
Don’t keep what wasn’t in the asking
After Naperville Unit District 203 got what it wanted when it went out with its hat in its hands, it proceeded to pull the wool over the taxpayers’ eyes.
But at least their eyes were protected from a sharp stick yet to be thrust.
In 2002, District 203 got voter approval for a tax hike. But what it told the taxpayers it would need, and what the school district actually collected, are two immensely different things. The district admits it wound up collecting $24 million more than voters were led to expect. This is due to a loophole in the tax cap law, brought to light in an investigative series by the Daily Herald. That analysis actually showed that District 203 received $45.8 million more over four years than if the full tax increase had been collected in one year. We stand by that reporting.
The district should be faithful to what it communicated to the electorate. That means refunding the amount collected beyond what the district said, in 2002, that it needed. That means admitting error — either confusion over the tax cap law or intentionally misleading voters.
Instead, the school board has refused to refund anything, with only board members Mike Davitt and Jim Caulfield voting to lower the district’s property tax levy to allow the district to return the $24 million over time. Even a one-time refund from the district’s $8.9 million surplus, offered by board member Gerry Cassioppi, was refused.
The sharp stick.
The district explains that refunding the over-collection would leave the school program financially vulnerable. Well, if it needed that extra $24 million to eliminate the risk of financial ruin, it should have asked for it openly and honestly.
Board President Dean Reschke has an interesting revisionist view of the referendum campaign. What the district asked for, he said, was merely a projection. Therefore, it presumably is under no obligation to honor what it said.
We could see the tax increase impact, as presented in 2002, being off a few thousand bucks. But $24 million? If the district allows math students to use calculators nowadays, shouldn’t the administration be allowed the same luxury?
And if “projections” are going to be the precedent in pitching tax increases, we would recommend voters be wary of being fooled by such lack of precision in any future District 203 tax increase proposal.
The district can point out that it has agreed to forgo at least $5.3 million it could have asked for this year, courtesy of that loophole. Hold the applause. This is just money taxpayers didn’t expect to have to surrender.
The history of this issue has been one replete with denial and blaming the messengers, whether in the media or public. And it reveals a disconnect that has been revealed, time and time again in this school district, as “lack of trust.” Well, here’s a new trust-buster to deal with.
All this points out the need for the state to impose a directive on school districts in the form of a legislative closure of the tax cap loophole.
And though taxpayers in District 203 aren’t getting their money back, we recommend they deposit the school district’s handling of this matter in their memory bank. There’s a school board election next year.
Don’t keep what wasn’t in the asking
After Naperville Unit District 203 got what it wanted when it went out with its hat in its hands, it proceeded to pull the wool over the taxpayers’ eyes.
But at least their eyes were protected from a sharp stick yet to be thrust.
In 2002, District 203 got voter approval for a tax hike. But what it told the taxpayers it would need, and what the school district actually collected, are two immensely different things. The district admits it wound up collecting $24 million more than voters were led to expect. This is due to a loophole in the tax cap law, brought to light in an investigative series by the Daily Herald. That analysis actually showed that District 203 received $45.8 million more over four years than if the full tax increase had been collected in one year. We stand by that reporting.
The district should be faithful to what it communicated to the electorate. That means refunding the amount collected beyond what the district said, in 2002, that it needed. That means admitting error — either confusion over the tax cap law or intentionally misleading voters.
Instead, the school board has refused to refund anything, with only board members Mike Davitt and Jim Caulfield voting to lower the district’s property tax levy to allow the district to return the $24 million over time. Even a one-time refund from the district’s $8.9 million surplus, offered by board member Gerry Cassioppi, was refused.
The sharp stick.
The district explains that refunding the over-collection would leave the school program financially vulnerable. Well, if it needed that extra $24 million to eliminate the risk of financial ruin, it should have asked for it openly and honestly.
Board President Dean Reschke has an interesting revisionist view of the referendum campaign. What the district asked for, he said, was merely a projection. Therefore, it presumably is under no obligation to honor what it said.
We could see the tax increase impact, as presented in 2002, being off a few thousand bucks. But $24 million? If the district allows math students to use calculators nowadays, shouldn’t the administration be allowed the same luxury?
And if “projections” are going to be the precedent in pitching tax increases, we would recommend voters be wary of being fooled by such lack of precision in any future District 203 tax increase proposal.
The district can point out that it has agreed to forgo at least $5.3 million it could have asked for this year, courtesy of that loophole. Hold the applause. This is just money taxpayers didn’t expect to have to surrender.
The history of this issue has been one replete with denial and blaming the messengers, whether in the media or public. And it reveals a disconnect that has been revealed, time and time again in this school district, as “lack of trust.” Well, here’s a new trust-buster to deal with.
All this points out the need for the state to impose a directive on school districts in the form of a legislative closure of the tax cap loophole.
And though taxpayers in District 203 aren’t getting their money back, we recommend they deposit the school district’s handling of this matter in their memory bank. There’s a school board election next year.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
School board members attack fiscally accountable school board member.
What we glean from the letter to the editor posted in the Daily Herald below is that Mr. Snow did not jump on board with the District 300 tax and spend mentality. It appears to us that D - 300 started nagging the Distrirct 158 board to shut Mr. Snow up. Let us hope he does not listen. If you research Mr. Snow you will find he is the only fiscally accoutable school board member on the District 158 board. Mr. Snow uncovered the fact the school board could take in millions of dollars more than promised the taxpayers among other items. The taxaholics do not like that.
When reviewing the D 300 finances he found millions of dollars in unaccounted for revenue. It appears that D - 300 is doing all they can to make Mr. Snow look bad and shut him up. Yet another reason to vote "no".
The school board members in the letter to the editor below are hypocritical. In 2004, board member Skaja wrote a letter to the editor and signed it as a board member, clearly advocating a yes vote on their referendum. She also
defended CFO Paul Halvorsen who was subsequently lost his job for withholding information from the
public. Her letter is at Election Interference.org
Then at a board meeting in 2004, the Daily Herald quoted her as saying they were having "informational"
meetings to ensure the referendum passed. You can view that article here.
Further comments about this matter can be viewed at Cal Skinners site McHenry County BLOG
Snow doesn’t speak for Dist.158 board
District 158 board and finance committee member Larry Snow has engaged in speaking at various events both within and outside District 158. Some of the comments he made at these events were published in local papers.
As board members, we would like to clarify that Snow was not speaking on behalf of District 158, the board of education or our finance committee. We regret any damaging effects his comments may have on the staff, students and residents of District 300 and surrounding communities.
Snow also called upon local village officials and accused them of not caring about children. Furthermore, he attempted to mislead them into thinking he was speaking as a representative of District 158. We regret any damaging effects his comments to those officials may have had.
We would like to publicly state that board President Mike Skala and interim Superintendent Robert Hammon are the spokesmen for our board. No one else has been given authority to represent District 158 at public meetings.
We further encourage concerned officials and citizens to contact the board of education through the District 158 administration at (847) 659-6158 regarding any concerns about representations by Snow.
Every citizen, whether a member of an elected board or not, has a right to free speech. However, it is our hope that everyone understands a board of education member has no legal authority as an individual and that board decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a board of education meeting.
We would also like to clarify that we are signing this letter as individual board members.
Frank Coleman, Huntley
Shawn Green, Union
Kim Skaja, Union
Mike Skala, Huntley
Glen Stewart, Huntley
Rosemary Herringer
Huntley
When reviewing the D 300 finances he found millions of dollars in unaccounted for revenue. It appears that D - 300 is doing all they can to make Mr. Snow look bad and shut him up. Yet another reason to vote "no".
The school board members in the letter to the editor below are hypocritical. In 2004, board member Skaja wrote a letter to the editor and signed it as a board member, clearly advocating a yes vote on their referendum. She also
defended CFO Paul Halvorsen who was subsequently lost his job for withholding information from the
public. Her letter is at Election Interference.org
Then at a board meeting in 2004, the Daily Herald quoted her as saying they were having "informational"
meetings to ensure the referendum passed. You can view that article here.
Further comments about this matter can be viewed at Cal Skinners site McHenry County BLOG
Snow doesn’t speak for Dist.158 board
District 158 board and finance committee member Larry Snow has engaged in speaking at various events both within and outside District 158. Some of the comments he made at these events were published in local papers.
As board members, we would like to clarify that Snow was not speaking on behalf of District 158, the board of education or our finance committee. We regret any damaging effects his comments may have on the staff, students and residents of District 300 and surrounding communities.
Snow also called upon local village officials and accused them of not caring about children. Furthermore, he attempted to mislead them into thinking he was speaking as a representative of District 158. We regret any damaging effects his comments to those officials may have had.
We would like to publicly state that board President Mike Skala and interim Superintendent Robert Hammon are the spokesmen for our board. No one else has been given authority to represent District 158 at public meetings.
We further encourage concerned officials and citizens to contact the board of education through the District 158 administration at (847) 659-6158 regarding any concerns about representations by Snow.
Every citizen, whether a member of an elected board or not, has a right to free speech. However, it is our hope that everyone understands a board of education member has no legal authority as an individual and that board decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a board of education meeting.
We would also like to clarify that we are signing this letter as individual board members.
Frank Coleman, Huntley
Shawn Green, Union
Kim Skaja, Union
Mike Skala, Huntley
Glen Stewart, Huntley
Rosemary Herringer
Huntley
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
District 181 investigates tax mistake
The Daily Herald
has another great story relating to public education issues. Are the school board member and the administrator in the story below incompetent or purposely trying to cheat the public. Decide for yourself.
District 181 investigates tax mistake
By Catherine Edman
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, February 21, 2006
School board members in Hinsdale Elementary District 181 want to know why an extra $5 million wound up in the district’s property tax request this year despite their explicit orders to the contrary.
Monday night the board discussed who was responsible, meeting behind closed doors for several hours to talk about “personnel.”
“On the surface it appears to be an innocent mistake; however, it’s a serious one,” board member Kevin Hanrahan said.
Last week, the board learned that despite its direction to the administration, officials requested $43.6 million, not $38.6 million, from the property tax rolls in 2005.
Board Vice President Bill Moucka refused to comment on the results of the investigation into the multimillion-dollar gaffe, saying the board would release a statement at next Monday’s board meeting. The investigation remains ongoing, he said, adding that the board was assured by the district attorney, as well as by the DuPage and Cook county clerks, the error can be corrected with “no difference to the taxpayer.”
Other board members said they are concerned, though, about how the mistake will play to residents already skeptical of the district’s fiscal management.
In December, the board voted 4-3 to drop the 2005 property tax request by $5 million after residents pointed out the district took far more money from a 2002 tax rate increase than it promised voters four years ago. Before the vote, the administration presented three financial options ranging from $38.6 million to $43.6 million and argued strongly in favor of the largest amount.
The board, amid much controversy, opted for $38.6 million.
At last week’s meeting, though, former Glen Ellyn resident Michael Lynch presented copies of the county tax levy documents to the board, showing the district requested the $43.6 million.
“I was surprised, disappointed and concerned,” said Hanrahan, who was among those who had voted for the $38.6 million request.
Officials, who could not be reached Monday, had said at last week’s meeting the documents were submitted in error, board members said.
Catherine Delany, a board member whose signature appears on several of the forms, she said she did not notice the amount was wrong when they were presented for her to sign.
Delany was among the members who voted to drop the levy request in December because it was clear the district exceeded the amount it told voters to expect when it asked them to approve a 31-cent increase in the education fund. The district said the cost would be an additional $605 per year for the owner of a $600,000 house, but then it used a portion of the property tax cap law that allows it to continue taking more money for up to five years.
A Daily Herald analysis last year of 25 school districts, of which District 181 was not included, showed they took $263 million more than voters likely expected over a span of five years using the same portion of the law.
“We told them it was going to cost $605 additional a year,” said Delany, a seven-year board member in District 181. “We lied — it cost hundreds more than that. I felt we should have taken the amount we asked for.”
Asking for less money than the district was legally entitled to this year, or only $38.6 million in property taxes, was “the only way we could stop overtaxing,” she said.
Click here to view the rest of the story in the Daily Herald.
has another great story relating to public education issues. Are the school board member and the administrator in the story below incompetent or purposely trying to cheat the public. Decide for yourself.
District 181 investigates tax mistake
By Catherine Edman
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, February 21, 2006
School board members in Hinsdale Elementary District 181 want to know why an extra $5 million wound up in the district’s property tax request this year despite their explicit orders to the contrary.
Monday night the board discussed who was responsible, meeting behind closed doors for several hours to talk about “personnel.”
“On the surface it appears to be an innocent mistake; however, it’s a serious one,” board member Kevin Hanrahan said.
Last week, the board learned that despite its direction to the administration, officials requested $43.6 million, not $38.6 million, from the property tax rolls in 2005.
Board Vice President Bill Moucka refused to comment on the results of the investigation into the multimillion-dollar gaffe, saying the board would release a statement at next Monday’s board meeting. The investigation remains ongoing, he said, adding that the board was assured by the district attorney, as well as by the DuPage and Cook county clerks, the error can be corrected with “no difference to the taxpayer.”
Other board members said they are concerned, though, about how the mistake will play to residents already skeptical of the district’s fiscal management.
In December, the board voted 4-3 to drop the 2005 property tax request by $5 million after residents pointed out the district took far more money from a 2002 tax rate increase than it promised voters four years ago. Before the vote, the administration presented three financial options ranging from $38.6 million to $43.6 million and argued strongly in favor of the largest amount.
The board, amid much controversy, opted for $38.6 million.
At last week’s meeting, though, former Glen Ellyn resident Michael Lynch presented copies of the county tax levy documents to the board, showing the district requested the $43.6 million.
“I was surprised, disappointed and concerned,” said Hanrahan, who was among those who had voted for the $38.6 million request.
Officials, who could not be reached Monday, had said at last week’s meeting the documents were submitted in error, board members said.
Catherine Delany, a board member whose signature appears on several of the forms, she said she did not notice the amount was wrong when they were presented for her to sign.
Delany was among the members who voted to drop the levy request in December because it was clear the district exceeded the amount it told voters to expect when it asked them to approve a 31-cent increase in the education fund. The district said the cost would be an additional $605 per year for the owner of a $600,000 house, but then it used a portion of the property tax cap law that allows it to continue taking more money for up to five years.
A Daily Herald analysis last year of 25 school districts, of which District 181 was not included, showed they took $263 million more than voters likely expected over a span of five years using the same portion of the law.
“We told them it was going to cost $605 additional a year,” said Delany, a seven-year board member in District 181. “We lied — it cost hundreds more than that. I felt we should have taken the amount we asked for.”
Asking for less money than the district was legally entitled to this year, or only $38.6 million in property taxes, was “the only way we could stop overtaxing,” she said.
Click here to view the rest of the story in the Daily Herald.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Oberweis terms tenure for teachers ‘bunk’
As many of you know CRAFT has getting rid tenure in the K -12 system as part of the No Taxpayer Left Behind platform.
Oberweis terms tenure for teachers ‘bunk’
By Eric Krol
Daily Herald Political Writer
Posted Saturday, February 18, 2006
Republican governor candidate Jim Oberweis called teacher tenure “bunk” Friday, suggesting the state scrap the practice in favor of a system based on merit pay.
“If you really care and you really want to improve our educational system, you’ve got to reward the best teachers and you’ve got to get rid of the bad teachers,” said Oberweis in a meeting with the Daily Herald editorial board. “Tenure does one thing. It protects the bad teachers.”
That stand puts the Sugar Grove dairy magnate alone among the four major candidates running in the March 21 Republican governor primary. Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka of Riverside, Chicago businessman Ron Gidwitz and Bloomington state Sen. Bill Brady support teacher tenure.
The tenure question was spurred by a downstate Small Newspaper Group series last year that showed only 38 of the state’s 876 school districts have ever been successful in firing a teacher the past 18 years.
“Absolutely I would get rid of tenure because it only hurts the school system,” Oberweis said. “It only helps keep the bad teacher in their position.”
Oberweis acknowledged his stance probably wouldn’t win him support from teachers and teacher unions, but said he’s “a businessman, not a politician.”
He suggested a merit-based pay system for teachers, but would leave the details to be worked out by a panel of experts he’d appoint if elected.
For the rest of the story click here to go to the Daily Herald.
Oberweis terms tenure for teachers ‘bunk’
By Eric Krol
Daily Herald Political Writer
Posted Saturday, February 18, 2006
Republican governor candidate Jim Oberweis called teacher tenure “bunk” Friday, suggesting the state scrap the practice in favor of a system based on merit pay.
“If you really care and you really want to improve our educational system, you’ve got to reward the best teachers and you’ve got to get rid of the bad teachers,” said Oberweis in a meeting with the Daily Herald editorial board. “Tenure does one thing. It protects the bad teachers.”
That stand puts the Sugar Grove dairy magnate alone among the four major candidates running in the March 21 Republican governor primary. Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka of Riverside, Chicago businessman Ron Gidwitz and Bloomington state Sen. Bill Brady support teacher tenure.
The tenure question was spurred by a downstate Small Newspaper Group series last year that showed only 38 of the state’s 876 school districts have ever been successful in firing a teacher the past 18 years.
“Absolutely I would get rid of tenure because it only hurts the school system,” Oberweis said. “It only helps keep the bad teacher in their position.”
Oberweis acknowledged his stance probably wouldn’t win him support from teachers and teacher unions, but said he’s “a businessman, not a politician.”
He suggested a merit-based pay system for teachers, but would leave the details to be worked out by a panel of experts he’d appoint if elected.
For the rest of the story click here to go to the Daily Herald.
Oberweis only candidate to support school choice for parents and children
Solutions to improve education vary candidate by candidate
2/20/2006
By John Chase and Rick Pearson
Chicago Tribune
Republicans and Democrats running for governor all agree more needs to be done to improve education in Illinois, but they have sharp disagreements about the best way to achieve those successes.
For Republican Judy Baar Topinka, Illinois can't make significant improvements to public education without first addressing a budget she says is imbalanced, begin paying down the state's growing pension obligation, and cutting burgeoning health-care expenses.
But the incumbent, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, says more can be done now to increase the state's contributions to school districts across the state, particularly those in poorer communities.
The answers from the two--as well as from the other Democratic and three other major Republican candidates seeking nominations March 21 for governor--came in response to the second Tribune questionnaire on issues confronting the state.
Nearly every candidate agreed that the state's current funding system for education is too reliant on property taxes. But none was willing to embrace a tax swap that would probably bring more equity to education funding statewide by reducing property taxes while increasing state taxes.
Republican Ron Gidwitz, a businessman from Chicago and former head of the State Board of Education, acknowledged that the idea should be examined, as did Democrat Edwin Eisendrath, who is currently a vice president at Kendall College.
"I'll put the entire revenue system on the table," said Eisendrath, the governor's sole opponent in the Democratic primary.
Republican Bill Brady, a state senator from Bloomington, has a proposal to dedicate half of all natural revenue growth for education, which he estimates would be about $1 billion over four years. Aurora businessman Jim Oberweis said school vouchers allowing taxpayer dollars to help pay for private school tuition is the answer.
"Parents deserve to have a choice in the marketplace among a full range of public and private options," Oberweis said.
Both Blagojevich and Topinka said the key to improving education is increasing state funding to boost the minimum amount of money spent on each student in the state, which is known as the foundation level.
"We have raised the foundation level by $600 per student. Previous administrations averaged much less," Blagojevich said.
Topinka, the state's three-term treasurer, argues that though Blagojevich has increased the foundation level, he hasn't increased it as much as he promised.
"Four years ago, candidate Rod Blagojevich promised to raise the foundation level $250 a year or $1,000 over his four-year term," she said.
Topinka and Blagojevich also have a significant disagreement over what the state's response should be to claims by the Chicago Public Schools that it is facing one of the worst fiscal crises in recent memory.
Blagojevich has promised $100 million in state aid to help, but Topinka said making the promise is a "knee-jerk response." Instead, she said that if she's elected, the Chicago schools will have to make their case before getting a dime of new money.
Oberweis said the answer is to allow "children and parents escape from failing schools" through vouchers, while Gidwitz said the answer to the Chicago schools' problems is for the state to adopt a "zero-based" strategy that starts the state's spending process from scratch each year. That move would free up more money for schools statewide, he said.
"Chicago is not alone in suffering from a lack of resources," Gidwitz said.
"More than 80 percent of the school districts in the state are operating at a deficit."
Eisendrath said teacher training needs to be improved, as does school management, with which Brady agreed.
"I will use the savings from eliminating bureaucracy to incrementally increase classroom spending," Brady said.
Brady was the only candidate who said that if elected, he would dismantle the State Board of Education and restructure it into a department that reports directly to the governor. Most of the others said they would change the board's makeup with more members "independent" of the governor's office.
To view the rest of the article click here.
2/20/2006
By John Chase and Rick Pearson
Chicago Tribune
Republicans and Democrats running for governor all agree more needs to be done to improve education in Illinois, but they have sharp disagreements about the best way to achieve those successes.
For Republican Judy Baar Topinka, Illinois can't make significant improvements to public education without first addressing a budget she says is imbalanced, begin paying down the state's growing pension obligation, and cutting burgeoning health-care expenses.
But the incumbent, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, says more can be done now to increase the state's contributions to school districts across the state, particularly those in poorer communities.
The answers from the two--as well as from the other Democratic and three other major Republican candidates seeking nominations March 21 for governor--came in response to the second Tribune questionnaire on issues confronting the state.
Nearly every candidate agreed that the state's current funding system for education is too reliant on property taxes. But none was willing to embrace a tax swap that would probably bring more equity to education funding statewide by reducing property taxes while increasing state taxes.
Republican Ron Gidwitz, a businessman from Chicago and former head of the State Board of Education, acknowledged that the idea should be examined, as did Democrat Edwin Eisendrath, who is currently a vice president at Kendall College.
"I'll put the entire revenue system on the table," said Eisendrath, the governor's sole opponent in the Democratic primary.
Republican Bill Brady, a state senator from Bloomington, has a proposal to dedicate half of all natural revenue growth for education, which he estimates would be about $1 billion over four years. Aurora businessman Jim Oberweis said school vouchers allowing taxpayer dollars to help pay for private school tuition is the answer.
"Parents deserve to have a choice in the marketplace among a full range of public and private options," Oberweis said.
Both Blagojevich and Topinka said the key to improving education is increasing state funding to boost the minimum amount of money spent on each student in the state, which is known as the foundation level.
"We have raised the foundation level by $600 per student. Previous administrations averaged much less," Blagojevich said.
Topinka, the state's three-term treasurer, argues that though Blagojevich has increased the foundation level, he hasn't increased it as much as he promised.
"Four years ago, candidate Rod Blagojevich promised to raise the foundation level $250 a year or $1,000 over his four-year term," she said.
Topinka and Blagojevich also have a significant disagreement over what the state's response should be to claims by the Chicago Public Schools that it is facing one of the worst fiscal crises in recent memory.
Blagojevich has promised $100 million in state aid to help, but Topinka said making the promise is a "knee-jerk response." Instead, she said that if she's elected, the Chicago schools will have to make their case before getting a dime of new money.
Oberweis said the answer is to allow "children and parents escape from failing schools" through vouchers, while Gidwitz said the answer to the Chicago schools' problems is for the state to adopt a "zero-based" strategy that starts the state's spending process from scratch each year. That move would free up more money for schools statewide, he said.
"Chicago is not alone in suffering from a lack of resources," Gidwitz said.
"More than 80 percent of the school districts in the state are operating at a deficit."
Eisendrath said teacher training needs to be improved, as does school management, with which Brady agreed.
"I will use the savings from eliminating bureaucracy to incrementally increase classroom spending," Brady said.
Brady was the only candidate who said that if elected, he would dismantle the State Board of Education and restructure it into a department that reports directly to the governor. Most of the others said they would change the board's makeup with more members "independent" of the governor's office.
To view the rest of the article click here.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Pensions obligations - Yet another reason to vote "NO" March 21st
The item below was put together by our friend Bill Zettler. Passing referenda increases salaries placing a larger burden on the taxpayers (that includes you) who pay 80% of the pensions. Today's pension burdens will be paid for by your children and grandchildren. We need legislation reform and spending reform. Throwing more money at the problem only makes the problem worse.
PENSION UPDATE: TOP 2005 STATE PENSION = $357,800
The top pension in 2005 was $357,800 as opposed to last years measly $314,000. To give you an idea of what that pension is worth think about it this way: in order to receive $357,800 in interest each year you would have to buy a CD worth at least $7 million.
In 2005 the State of Illinois continued to make 1,000’s of pension millionaires out of retired public employees with the taxpayer picking up the tab. Here are some more disturbing pension facts:
…In 2005 1,578 former state employees had pensions of over $100,000, up 40% from 2004’s 1,129. Next year we should easily cross the 2,000 mark.
…Last year 24 former public employees had pensions greater than President Clinton. Despite a nice increase for Clinton, this year’s total is 29.
…For the first time you need a pension of at least $150,000 to even make it into the Top 100.
…Ninety of the 100 were University or K-12 employees meaning they probably spent the majority of their careers working 9 months a year with tenure.
…Over 80% of the pension payment comes from taxpayers.
…Over 275 state pensions had MONTHLY payments greater than average Social Security ANNUAL payment of $11,000.
… Former U of I coach Lou Henson left Illinois for New Mexico years ago but we, the generous taxpayers of Illinois, continue to send him pension checks totaling $250,440 per year.
Another way to look at it is the top pension is 33 times the amount the average Social Security recipient receives and 12 times the median wage of the average full time Illinois worker ($28,806).
Why do average people, most of whom do not have enough money for their own retirement, have to pay taxes to buy the equivalent of a $7 million CD for one public employee?
If these former Illinois Public employees had been on Social Security and a 401K program during their working years (like the rest of us) taxpayer liability for their pensions would be zero as opposed to $182 Billion for the Teacher Retirement System alone.
PENSION UPDATE: TOP 2005 STATE PENSION = $357,800
The top pension in 2005 was $357,800 as opposed to last years measly $314,000. To give you an idea of what that pension is worth think about it this way: in order to receive $357,800 in interest each year you would have to buy a CD worth at least $7 million.
In 2005 the State of Illinois continued to make 1,000’s of pension millionaires out of retired public employees with the taxpayer picking up the tab. Here are some more disturbing pension facts:
…In 2005 1,578 former state employees had pensions of over $100,000, up 40% from 2004’s 1,129. Next year we should easily cross the 2,000 mark.
…Last year 24 former public employees had pensions greater than President Clinton. Despite a nice increase for Clinton, this year’s total is 29.
…For the first time you need a pension of at least $150,000 to even make it into the Top 100.
…Ninety of the 100 were University or K-12 employees meaning they probably spent the majority of their careers working 9 months a year with tenure.
…Over 80% of the pension payment comes from taxpayers.
…Over 275 state pensions had MONTHLY payments greater than average Social Security ANNUAL payment of $11,000.
… Former U of I coach Lou Henson left Illinois for New Mexico years ago but we, the generous taxpayers of Illinois, continue to send him pension checks totaling $250,440 per year.
Another way to look at it is the top pension is 33 times the amount the average Social Security recipient receives and 12 times the median wage of the average full time Illinois worker ($28,806).
Why do average people, most of whom do not have enough money for their own retirement, have to pay taxes to buy the equivalent of a $7 million CD for one public employee?
If these former Illinois Public employees had been on Social Security and a 401K program during their working years (like the rest of us) taxpayer liability for their pensions would be zero as opposed to $182 Billion for the Teacher Retirement System alone.
Increased spending reduces literacy.
COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz
Increased school spending reduces literacy
I got a phone call last week from the head of one of the many departments in the Clark County School District which I had mentioned in my March 16 essay on elephantine school districts, headlined "Mission Creep."
"Do you even know what my department does?" demanded the fellow, whose listing in the district's administrative phone directory says only "Warranty Department."
I had no idea, I said. And, I continued, that was the whole point of the listing: The sheer number -- hundreds -- of bureaucrats being paid $60,000 and $80,000 and more per year, leeches living off taxpayer funds to do things the average taxpayer doesn't know about, doesn't understand, has never been told about, and couldn't possibly be expected to explain, justify or favor if he were asked to.
"And you think just because the taxpayers are too stupid to understand the importance of what my department does, that's a reason we should be closed down?" he asked.
Even though I had not proposed any specific department be "closed down," I wrote down his words, because I couldn't possibly have invented such a succinct summary of bureaucratic arrogance if I'd tried.
It's apparently fine to require the great unwashed masses of cud-chewing taxpayers, at gunpoint, to pay for all this bureaucratic overhead (the fellow's department apparently double-checks to make sure private contractors are building new school buildings properly). But the bureaucrats should in no way be subject to the whims of those taxpayers, should they try to stop funding functions they don't understand, which have never been explained to them, and which have never been tested against any free-market competitive model to find out if they're truly necessary, or even being done at anywhere near as low a cost as possible.
(Care to compare administrative and maintenance costs at the average private or parochial school to those at a tax-funded campus?)
"Leeches?" my supercilious caller shrieked, pretending to laugh but instead issuing forth with something more like the chattering of an African pack scavenger. "There are no guns involved," he sneered. "Taxes are paid voluntarily."
"You're telling me that if I refuse to pay the property taxes that prop up the government schools, men with uniforms and guns won't eventually come and surround my house with yellow police tape, set my belongings out on the sidewalk, and auction it off?" I asked.
"Well, of course," my caller replied. "If you don't pay your taxes you have to pay the consequences. That's the free choice you have -- to pay your taxes or to face the consequences."
That was his definition of "voluntary," as opposed to coercion. Comply or get evicted from your own home -- and if you resist that, run the risk of getting shot or burned out with incendiary grenades.
"He lost the argument right there," volunteered a visiting Arizona Baptist minister of my acquaintance, with whom I happened to have dinner the following evening. "If you're not willing to admit that taxes are mandatory, that they're collected by the coercive use of force -- even if it's only applied to the occasional protester to 'set an example' -- then there's no common moral ground on which you can continue that discussion."
My chortling caller next tried to get me to admit that building new government school buildings was necessary.
Just the opposite, I said. New York state (government) teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto, in his book "The Underground History of American Education," cites statistics from the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress confirming that the literacy rate in this country in 1940 was 96 percent for whites and 80 percent for blacks, but fell over the next 60 years to 83 percent for whites and 60 percent for blacks.
"Put another way," Gatto reveals, "black illiteracy doubled; white illiteracy quadrupled," despite the fact that "We spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago."
Why this change since the 1940s? It was during the Second World War that the government schools began to abandon the old, tried-and-true, phonetic method of teaching reading, Mr. Gatto reports.
If we built fewer government schools, that would increase pressure on parents to either home-school or get their kids into private schools, which would rescue more millions of souls from the enervating government youth indoctrination camps.
My caller could respond only by alternating between snorting, chuckling and cackling his disbelief that I could actually dare to say such things. "Where would all these private schools come from?" he sputtered.
"That's the same question they used to ask in the Soviet Union when it was suggested the state get out of the food distribution business and allow the private sector to take over: 'Where would all these so-called "private grocery stores" come from?! The greedy capitalists would charge such high prices that millions would starve!' Yet it turns out the free market works just fine, as always; in America everybody gets more and better food for less."
For the rest of the story go to Las Vegas Review Journal
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Apr-13-Sun-2003/opinion/21085253.html
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."
Increased school spending reduces literacy
I got a phone call last week from the head of one of the many departments in the Clark County School District which I had mentioned in my March 16 essay on elephantine school districts, headlined "Mission Creep."
"Do you even know what my department does?" demanded the fellow, whose listing in the district's administrative phone directory says only "Warranty Department."
I had no idea, I said. And, I continued, that was the whole point of the listing: The sheer number -- hundreds -- of bureaucrats being paid $60,000 and $80,000 and more per year, leeches living off taxpayer funds to do things the average taxpayer doesn't know about, doesn't understand, has never been told about, and couldn't possibly be expected to explain, justify or favor if he were asked to.
"And you think just because the taxpayers are too stupid to understand the importance of what my department does, that's a reason we should be closed down?" he asked.
Even though I had not proposed any specific department be "closed down," I wrote down his words, because I couldn't possibly have invented such a succinct summary of bureaucratic arrogance if I'd tried.
It's apparently fine to require the great unwashed masses of cud-chewing taxpayers, at gunpoint, to pay for all this bureaucratic overhead (the fellow's department apparently double-checks to make sure private contractors are building new school buildings properly). But the bureaucrats should in no way be subject to the whims of those taxpayers, should they try to stop funding functions they don't understand, which have never been explained to them, and which have never been tested against any free-market competitive model to find out if they're truly necessary, or even being done at anywhere near as low a cost as possible.
(Care to compare administrative and maintenance costs at the average private or parochial school to those at a tax-funded campus?)
"Leeches?" my supercilious caller shrieked, pretending to laugh but instead issuing forth with something more like the chattering of an African pack scavenger. "There are no guns involved," he sneered. "Taxes are paid voluntarily."
"You're telling me that if I refuse to pay the property taxes that prop up the government schools, men with uniforms and guns won't eventually come and surround my house with yellow police tape, set my belongings out on the sidewalk, and auction it off?" I asked.
"Well, of course," my caller replied. "If you don't pay your taxes you have to pay the consequences. That's the free choice you have -- to pay your taxes or to face the consequences."
That was his definition of "voluntary," as opposed to coercion. Comply or get evicted from your own home -- and if you resist that, run the risk of getting shot or burned out with incendiary grenades.
"He lost the argument right there," volunteered a visiting Arizona Baptist minister of my acquaintance, with whom I happened to have dinner the following evening. "If you're not willing to admit that taxes are mandatory, that they're collected by the coercive use of force -- even if it's only applied to the occasional protester to 'set an example' -- then there's no common moral ground on which you can continue that discussion."
My chortling caller next tried to get me to admit that building new government school buildings was necessary.
Just the opposite, I said. New York state (government) teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto, in his book "The Underground History of American Education," cites statistics from the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress confirming that the literacy rate in this country in 1940 was 96 percent for whites and 80 percent for blacks, but fell over the next 60 years to 83 percent for whites and 60 percent for blacks.
"Put another way," Gatto reveals, "black illiteracy doubled; white illiteracy quadrupled," despite the fact that "We spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago."
Why this change since the 1940s? It was during the Second World War that the government schools began to abandon the old, tried-and-true, phonetic method of teaching reading, Mr. Gatto reports.
If we built fewer government schools, that would increase pressure on parents to either home-school or get their kids into private schools, which would rescue more millions of souls from the enervating government youth indoctrination camps.
My caller could respond only by alternating between snorting, chuckling and cackling his disbelief that I could actually dare to say such things. "Where would all these private schools come from?" he sputtered.
"That's the same question they used to ask in the Soviet Union when it was suggested the state get out of the food distribution business and allow the private sector to take over: 'Where would all these so-called "private grocery stores" come from?! The greedy capitalists would charge such high prices that millions would starve!' Yet it turns out the free market works just fine, as always; in America everybody gets more and better food for less."
For the rest of the story go to Las Vegas Review Journal
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Apr-13-Sun-2003/opinion/21085253.html
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."
Friday, February 17, 2006
Teachers need lesson in private sector
The below editorial appeared in the Herald News.
Teachers need lesson in private sector
The issue: Teachers expect some interesting perks these days.
We say: Time to get real.
How times have changed.
Twenty years ago, the teaching profession was often the last resort in career choices. Low pay, basic benefits and long hours were an unattractive option to opportunities offered in the private sector.
Since then, the pay for teachers and administrators has risen steadily. Though their salary increases have come down somewhat in the past few years, 3 percent to 5 percent yearly bumps aren't unusual. Teachers still receive pensions, which is understandable since they don't earn Social Security benefits. Up until a couple of years ago, many districts still provided full medical benefits at no cost, though the trend now is to more closely mirror benefits received in the private sector and have the teachers share a portion of the cost.
Speaking of the private sector, much has changed there, too, in the last two decades. Pensions, fully paid medical coverage and double-digit pay increases have become things of the past for a majority of workers in nongovernment jobs. In many industries, downsizing, cost-cutting and subcontracting of staff work has become a yearly occurrence. A 1 percent or 2 percent yearly pay increase, if you're lucky, is often the most many expect these days.
Despite this, school officials are baffled when they have a difficult time convincing the Legislature, or even parents in their district, that they need more money to run the schools.
Much of the money used by a school district is for salaries. Teachers are educating the future of our country, and smaller class sizes help make teaching — and learning — easier.
But empathy works both ways. Educators need to be sensitive to the economic and lifestyle realities of the communities they serve. And that hasn't always been the case.
On Monday, for instance, the teachers' union in Plainfield protested the fact that their traditional two-full-week winter holiday was being cut by five days. The union claimed the extra five days off were needed to maintain the "continuity of education," especially for Hispanic students whose families may visit Mexico for three weeks at winter break. Though we laud the union for its sensitivity to diversity, we must say of their claim: Yeah, right.
The union also requested that spring break be rescheduled to coordinate with that of schools in DuPage County so teachers wouldn't have the financial burden of paying for day care. Are they even trying to understand what other parents, parents of the children they teach, must go through?
Finally, in a recent OpenLine submission, a teacher lamented the fact that it took 20 years for him or her to get an annual salary up to $90,000. A lot of households will never see that kind of money on two salaries, let alone one.
For the rest of the story click here.
Teachers need lesson in private sector
The issue: Teachers expect some interesting perks these days.
We say: Time to get real.
How times have changed.
Twenty years ago, the teaching profession was often the last resort in career choices. Low pay, basic benefits and long hours were an unattractive option to opportunities offered in the private sector.
Since then, the pay for teachers and administrators has risen steadily. Though their salary increases have come down somewhat in the past few years, 3 percent to 5 percent yearly bumps aren't unusual. Teachers still receive pensions, which is understandable since they don't earn Social Security benefits. Up until a couple of years ago, many districts still provided full medical benefits at no cost, though the trend now is to more closely mirror benefits received in the private sector and have the teachers share a portion of the cost.
Speaking of the private sector, much has changed there, too, in the last two decades. Pensions, fully paid medical coverage and double-digit pay increases have become things of the past for a majority of workers in nongovernment jobs. In many industries, downsizing, cost-cutting and subcontracting of staff work has become a yearly occurrence. A 1 percent or 2 percent yearly pay increase, if you're lucky, is often the most many expect these days.
Despite this, school officials are baffled when they have a difficult time convincing the Legislature, or even parents in their district, that they need more money to run the schools.
Much of the money used by a school district is for salaries. Teachers are educating the future of our country, and smaller class sizes help make teaching — and learning — easier.
But empathy works both ways. Educators need to be sensitive to the economic and lifestyle realities of the communities they serve. And that hasn't always been the case.
On Monday, for instance, the teachers' union in Plainfield protested the fact that their traditional two-full-week winter holiday was being cut by five days. The union claimed the extra five days off were needed to maintain the "continuity of education," especially for Hispanic students whose families may visit Mexico for three weeks at winter break. Though we laud the union for its sensitivity to diversity, we must say of their claim: Yeah, right.
The union also requested that spring break be rescheduled to coordinate with that of schools in DuPage County so teachers wouldn't have the financial burden of paying for day care. Are they even trying to understand what other parents, parents of the children they teach, must go through?
Finally, in a recent OpenLine submission, a teacher lamented the fact that it took 20 years for him or her to get an annual salary up to $90,000. A lot of households will never see that kind of money on two salaries, let alone one.
For the rest of the story click here.
Battle lines drawn in D - 200
A group that opposes the insane spending in D 200 emerges in Woodstock. The story below was reported in the Northwest Herald on February 17, 2006.
Battle lines drawn in D-200
[published on Fri, Feb 17, 2006]
WOODSTOCK – As election day nears, supporters and opponents are drawing battle lines over the Woodstock School District 200's request for $105 million in new taxes to build more schools.
Mailings from a pro-referendum committee called Citizens for District 200 Schools soon could be hitting mailboxes, while an anti-referendum campaign has taken to cyberspace.
When voters head to the polls March 21, they will be asked whether School District 200 should be allowed to build three new schools, including a new high school with a pool; renovate Olson Middle School and Verda Dierzen Early Learning Center; and temporarily keep open Clay Elementary School.
The proposal, which could cost taxpayers $105 million payable over 20 years, was designed to help manage a projected 4,300-student population boom by academic year 2013-14.
For the owner of a $200,000 home claiming the $5,000 homestead tax exemption, the bond issue would mean an additional $141.83 in property taxes the first year.
The Woodstock Citizen, a blog launched earlier this month in response to the referendum, raised eyebrows by posting anti-referendum ads on a site supported by many of downtown Woodstock's prominent businesses. Blogs such as The Woodstock Citizen are on-line journals maintained by one person or a group of people who post short articles and running commentary about various issues.
One of the ads features a series of unsigned testimonials purportedly from referendum opponents. For the rest of the story in the Northwest Herald click here.
To visit Woodstock Citizens for Sane Spending and Stop D 200 Tax hike click here.
To view the unsigned testimonials click here.
To view the main website woodstockcitizen.com click here.
CRAFT tried to contact this group via email. As of this posting we have not had a response.
Battle lines drawn in D-200
[published on Fri, Feb 17, 2006]
WOODSTOCK – As election day nears, supporters and opponents are drawing battle lines over the Woodstock School District 200's request for $105 million in new taxes to build more schools.
Mailings from a pro-referendum committee called Citizens for District 200 Schools soon could be hitting mailboxes, while an anti-referendum campaign has taken to cyberspace.
When voters head to the polls March 21, they will be asked whether School District 200 should be allowed to build three new schools, including a new high school with a pool; renovate Olson Middle School and Verda Dierzen Early Learning Center; and temporarily keep open Clay Elementary School.
The proposal, which could cost taxpayers $105 million payable over 20 years, was designed to help manage a projected 4,300-student population boom by academic year 2013-14.
For the owner of a $200,000 home claiming the $5,000 homestead tax exemption, the bond issue would mean an additional $141.83 in property taxes the first year.
The Woodstock Citizen, a blog launched earlier this month in response to the referendum, raised eyebrows by posting anti-referendum ads on a site supported by many of downtown Woodstock's prominent businesses. Blogs such as The Woodstock Citizen are on-line journals maintained by one person or a group of people who post short articles and running commentary about various issues.
One of the ads features a series of unsigned testimonials purportedly from referendum opponents. For the rest of the story in the Northwest Herald click here.
To visit Woodstock Citizens for Sane Spending and Stop D 200 Tax hike click here.
To view the unsigned testimonials click here.
To view the main website woodstockcitizen.com click here.
CRAFT tried to contact this group via email. As of this posting we have not had a response.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Why we should reject universal preschool
There has been recent talk of universal preschool in the story below. Just below the Chicago Tribune story is an excerpt from and a link to No Universal Preschool.
Doubts cast on preschool proposal
2/13/2006
By Diane Rado and Rick Pearson
Chicago Tribune
Under attack from political opponents, Gov. Rod Blagojevich acknowledged Sunday that it won't be easy to push through his proposal to create the most expansive state preschool program in the nation.
Nevertheless, "we will roll up our sleeves and we will fight," Blagojevich said in announcing his "Preschool for All" initiative, which would offer state-paid pre-kindergarten to all 3- and 4-year-olds, regardless of family income.
If approved by lawmakers, Illinois would be the first state in the nation to offer so-called universal preschool to 3-year-olds and the fourth state to offer such access to 4-year-olds.
The program--a minimum 2 1/2-hour school day--would not be mandatory, and many families would likely stay in private preschools. Blagojevich's plan would cost an extra $135 million in the initial three years, with the price tag in outlying years still uncertain. In addition, the governor wants to finance the plan in part with money from state accounts reserved for special purposes, a practice that has spurred legal challenges.
After details of the plan first appeared in the Tribune over the weekend--just weeks before the March primary--Democratic and Republican candidates alike blasted Blagojevich.
"Unfortunately for the children of Illinois, in this election season the governor will use them as props for all sorts of promises," Edwin Eisendrath, Blagojevich's challenger in the March 21 Democratic primary, said in a statement.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Gidwitz, a former Illinois State Board of Education chairman, called the governor's announcement "another headline-grabbing stunt."
And Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, another Republican candidate for governor, said Blagojevich keeps "coming up with all these big, expensive, huge `warm-fuzzies,' usually involving children, and not really coming up with ways to pay for them."
For the rest of the story go to Doubts cast on preschool proposal
No Universal Preschool
Preschool-For-All is a prescription for stress, not success, and will literally make kids sick. The National Institute of Child Health and Development found that children who attend structured, curriculum-oriented, non-parental involved preschools have higher cortisol (stress hormone) levels caused by too early separation from their parents and too early academics. The Preschool-For-All Act dovetails with CA Assembly Bill 1246 that implements "preschool learning standards" in line with public school curriculum standards that include Math, English Language Arts, History, Science, and Social Sciences. Accountability will be required in the form of testing. This kind of academic stress takes a physical toll on young children reducing tolerance to viral and bacterial infections that result in chronic childhood illnesses.
Children enrolled in preschool have higher incidences of obesity. Physical activity is restrained in typical preschool classrooms. Fine motor development is impaired, contributing to learning disabilities. Active play such as running, jumping, climbing, and gross motor movement is discouraged. Kids get flabby and fat with lifelong health consequences.
Children who attend preschool exhibit problem behaviors, and are being expelled! The National Institute of Child Health and Development found that children who attend non-parental, structured, curriculum-oriented preschools have poorer work habits, lower grades and test scores, inferior peer relationships, substandard emotional health, aggression, and they are disobedient. In fact, children are being expelled from preschools at an alarming rate!
There is no such thing as "quality" public preschool. In fact, so-called "quality" state-run preschools can harm little kids. The artificial environment of a classroom, the supervision by transient, impassive strangers (certified teachers and aids), and indoctrination with standardized curriculum has been shown to be harmful to the intellectual, social, emotional, psychological and physical development of young children by researchers and educational psychologists including David Elkind, Kathy Hirsch-Pasek, Mary Eberstadt, and Jane Healy. These kinds of preschool environments are of a very poor quality. Current research studies show that young children learn best through interest-initiated learning, lots of imaginative play, and the opportunity to explore their environment in a natural rhythm and routine such as takes place at home, under the guidance of parents and attentive, loving adults.
For the rest of the story go to No Universal Preschool /
You may want to send the above story to Governor Blagojevich and tell him no universal pre-school.
Doubts cast on preschool proposal
2/13/2006
By Diane Rado and Rick Pearson
Chicago Tribune
Under attack from political opponents, Gov. Rod Blagojevich acknowledged Sunday that it won't be easy to push through his proposal to create the most expansive state preschool program in the nation.
Nevertheless, "we will roll up our sleeves and we will fight," Blagojevich said in announcing his "Preschool for All" initiative, which would offer state-paid pre-kindergarten to all 3- and 4-year-olds, regardless of family income.
If approved by lawmakers, Illinois would be the first state in the nation to offer so-called universal preschool to 3-year-olds and the fourth state to offer such access to 4-year-olds.
The program--a minimum 2 1/2-hour school day--would not be mandatory, and many families would likely stay in private preschools. Blagojevich's plan would cost an extra $135 million in the initial three years, with the price tag in outlying years still uncertain. In addition, the governor wants to finance the plan in part with money from state accounts reserved for special purposes, a practice that has spurred legal challenges.
After details of the plan first appeared in the Tribune over the weekend--just weeks before the March primary--Democratic and Republican candidates alike blasted Blagojevich.
"Unfortunately for the children of Illinois, in this election season the governor will use them as props for all sorts of promises," Edwin Eisendrath, Blagojevich's challenger in the March 21 Democratic primary, said in a statement.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Gidwitz, a former Illinois State Board of Education chairman, called the governor's announcement "another headline-grabbing stunt."
And Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, another Republican candidate for governor, said Blagojevich keeps "coming up with all these big, expensive, huge `warm-fuzzies,' usually involving children, and not really coming up with ways to pay for them."
For the rest of the story go to Doubts cast on preschool proposal
No Universal Preschool
Preschool-For-All is a prescription for stress, not success, and will literally make kids sick. The National Institute of Child Health and Development found that children who attend structured, curriculum-oriented, non-parental involved preschools have higher cortisol (stress hormone) levels caused by too early separation from their parents and too early academics. The Preschool-For-All Act dovetails with CA Assembly Bill 1246 that implements "preschool learning standards" in line with public school curriculum standards that include Math, English Language Arts, History, Science, and Social Sciences. Accountability will be required in the form of testing. This kind of academic stress takes a physical toll on young children reducing tolerance to viral and bacterial infections that result in chronic childhood illnesses.
Children enrolled in preschool have higher incidences of obesity. Physical activity is restrained in typical preschool classrooms. Fine motor development is impaired, contributing to learning disabilities. Active play such as running, jumping, climbing, and gross motor movement is discouraged. Kids get flabby and fat with lifelong health consequences.
Children who attend preschool exhibit problem behaviors, and are being expelled! The National Institute of Child Health and Development found that children who attend non-parental, structured, curriculum-oriented preschools have poorer work habits, lower grades and test scores, inferior peer relationships, substandard emotional health, aggression, and they are disobedient. In fact, children are being expelled from preschools at an alarming rate!
There is no such thing as "quality" public preschool. In fact, so-called "quality" state-run preschools can harm little kids. The artificial environment of a classroom, the supervision by transient, impassive strangers (certified teachers and aids), and indoctrination with standardized curriculum has been shown to be harmful to the intellectual, social, emotional, psychological and physical development of young children by researchers and educational psychologists including David Elkind, Kathy Hirsch-Pasek, Mary Eberstadt, and Jane Healy. These kinds of preschool environments are of a very poor quality. Current research studies show that young children learn best through interest-initiated learning, lots of imaginative play, and the opportunity to explore their environment in a natural rhythm and routine such as takes place at home, under the guidance of parents and attentive, loving adults.
For the rest of the story go to No Universal Preschool /
You may want to send the above story to Governor Blagojevich and tell him no universal pre-school.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Vote "NO" Signs
People have been writing to ask about Vote "NO" signs. If you are looking for signs in Lake County contact the Republican Assembly of Lake County. If you are looking for "NO" signs for the D-300 referenda contact the Family Taxpayers Network at 847-428-0212 or email them at mail@thechampion.org. CRAFT has run out of signs many were stolen when we loaned them to the folks in District 1, District 2 and District 158 to fight their referenda. Many were also stolen during the District 50 referenda campaign, luckily they are not running any referenda this election.
To keep your signs from being stolen keep them as close to your house as possible but still visible for the public to view. Contact the police if any signs are stolen. Bravo to the first individual who catches a no sign stealer on video tape and gets them prosecuted.
Fancy signs are not needed. You can make a sign on your own rather cheaply. Go to Home Depot or Mernards pick up a couple of two by fours a can of spray paint and a sheet of ply wood and make your own vote no sign. A few nails and a hammer and in minutes you will have your own sign. The cost of a no sign is much cheaper than raising your property taxes forever.
The other great thing is as soon as the opposition puts up their signs it is a great reminder for the no voters to get to the polls and vote.
To keep your signs from being stolen keep them as close to your house as possible but still visible for the public to view. Contact the police if any signs are stolen. Bravo to the first individual who catches a no sign stealer on video tape and gets them prosecuted.
Fancy signs are not needed. You can make a sign on your own rather cheaply. Go to Home Depot or Mernards pick up a couple of two by fours a can of spray paint and a sheet of ply wood and make your own vote no sign. A few nails and a hammer and in minutes you will have your own sign. The cost of a no sign is much cheaper than raising your property taxes forever.
The other great thing is as soon as the opposition puts up their signs it is a great reminder for the no voters to get to the polls and vote.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Big tests, big sticks
Commentary by Pete Speer
The article below addresses the differences in social context between PRC students and those in America. It discounts the No Child Left Behind program based on these differences. However, it implies that American schools must change.
Missing from discussion is the strong motivation in China -- under a communist dictatorship -- to move in some small way up the economic ladder. Implied (by listing the costs) is the value of such an education.
This article will be taken by proponents of our bankrupt system to mean that the social differences are responsible for the higher scores in China -- therefore scores may be ignored. This is not a correct reading of the article's content.
Indeed, the author concludes by suggesting that for our own dismal schools there must be another way. In America, the only other way is full competitive choice.
People hoping to intelligently debate this issue must be familiar with the article.
Pete Speer
The below article was reprinted with the permission of Dr. Orsini
-------------------------------------------
Illinois School Board Journal
January/February 2006
Big tests, big sticks
Social context of high-stakes
testing in China and U.S.
by Alfonso J. Orsini
Alfonso J. Orsini is director of the Western International School of Shanghai and a former special English teacher in Qingdao, China. His article first appeared in Education Week, July 13, 2005, and is reprinted with permission from the author.
This past school year, I have been teaching English for a special program at a public school in China. The experience has made me think a lot about the push toward high-stakes testing in the United States, especially with the impetus of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
China is a country that promises to change the economic face of the globe in the years ahead. It has an incredibly lean, mean education machine. American policymakers, seeing embarrassing data such as the poor showing of U.S. students on recent international assessments in science and math, say they want to prepare our children to meet the global competition posed by countries like China.
If the No Child Left Behind law is meant to do that ?to help us compete with countries that have used big tests for a long time to scientifically weed and stratify their citizens ?the plan will fail. This is not just because of the problems inherent in creating and enacting such tests, but also because of the differing social, economic and cultural contexts that surround such tests.
Here is what the United States is up against. In China, all of the items on American business interests' education agenda are in evidence. There is a focus on the "useful" subjects of math, science and technology. There are large, economical classes of 50 to 60 students each. This works fine in China, because the students here are driven, and their teachers mostly lecture. (Their bow to modernization is in using a computer beamer instead of the blackboard.)
Walking through a Chinese classroom, you hear students chanting a lot in unison. The teachers are well-trained, in that they follow the script of slavishly preparing for the big exams. While they teach only about 10 classes a week, they must be in the school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily to prepare. Some big exam ?schoolwide, citywide or nationwide ?is always looming. The school's headmaster even assigns teachers research papers. They comply because they want to get a promotion, perhaps a merit raise of 200 yuan ($24) added on to a monthly salary of, say, 2,000 yuan ($242) for a veteran.
Office talk is often about "grammar points" that may appear on an exam. The exams must have a number of virtually impossible questions to keep teachers and students scrambling, and to allow the remarkable few to rise to the top. If students do poorly, it comes back to haunt the teacher and the school. Last year, the local newspaper asked why fewer graduates at my school had been admitted to top universities. That heightened the anxiety.
Another numerically based improvement has been enacted here: more class time. At my boarding school (the stronger public schools in China are boarding), students are in the classroom from late August to late July, six days a week, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:25 p.m., with a 1?hour lunch/nap break and a five-minute eye-massage break led by a woman's peppy, almost militaristic voice broadcast over the public address system.
After some sports, dinner and time to do laundry by hand (we all do laundry by hand here), the students are back in the classroom for study from 6:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., with monitoring chiefly done by students and only a few teachers roving the halls. When evening study concludes, it's back up to the dorm to wash up with a basin; there are no hot showers. Then, eight kids bed down in each 9-by-12-foot room.
My kids are from a higher socioeconomic bracket. Their parents are paying 24,000 yuan ($2,900) extra, on top of the regular tuition of 3,000 yuan ($362) per year. I am preparing them to pass the new English entrance exam for a Canadian university. They got into this school only because they paid extra for the special program. With rising prosperity, these kinds of educational back doors, including Australian and United Kingdom foundation-year programs, are popping up all over.
My students, always weary but still cheerful, have never dated, never camped or been to a dance, and have almost never traveled. In a paired-discussion exercise in which they had to find something interesting about a classmate, everyone was astounded that a boy called Nick had danced with a girl at his aunt's wedding. In our town of Qingdao, one of the hottest places to be on a Saturday or Sunday is not the shopping mall but the Xin Hua bookstore.
The educational rigor in China results from the social context. Only about 48 percent of rural residents and 79 percent of urban residents attain more than a primary school education. Of the 27 million students completing the "compulsory" grade 9, around 25 percent go into a three-year academic high school program and 18 percent go into vocational training. Of those 6.67 million who go to academic high schools, around 3.5 million will make it to a four-year university program. The statistics are harsher in some areas. In Beijing, 49 percent of 18- to 22-year-olds are enrolled in postsecondary studies, but in places like Yunan Province, fewer than 9 percent are enrolled.
But this doesn't mean that the Chinese don't value education. There are 310 million people in schools at all levels here, including over a million studying through TV university. The number of university students in China has grown from 1.08 million in 1998 to more than 17 million in 2003. And the Chinese government has just launched a program to send 5,000 college teachers overseas each year for doctoral study or research.
China has a cheap, willing workforce composed partly of the 310 million surplus workers from the rural provinces, only 180 million of whom found jobs in 2003. It also has a cheap, well-trained professional class. Doctors earn perhaps 2,000 yuan ($242) a month, beginning teachers maybe 1,000 yuan ($121). People live remarkably frugal lives. China is progressing not through empire building or aggression, but because it has people willing to do virtually any work with incredible patience and persistence to survive. And it is selling this, the cheapest labor in the world, to all takers, including many U.S. investors. It is also building cooperative ties with Canada, Europe and Latin America, and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations group, which will create a free-trade zone of 2 billion people.
U.S. business leaders, in their urgent push to whip American education into line, may be among the few in our country who are truly aware of how things are outside the United States. They have a concrete motivation to be aware: money. And they may be seeing, correctly, that the peaceful threat posed by China and others developing nations requires that we do something differently. Some might say that a first step should be lowering the salaries of business executives. But if my perspective from China is valid, then a more general "leaning" of America may have to happen before big tests are widely tolerated by U.S. students and their families.
Big, consequential tests run up against a lot of obstacles in America. One of them is fundamental ?what the historian Richard Hofstadter labeled in his influential book as Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Others include the distraction posed by the cultural excesses that assault American kids every day and the fact that U.S. students know there is a college in America for just about anyone who can pay for it. But beyond such problems, I wonder if American kids sometimes don't care about study because they sense that many adults don't care about them ?about the life of their minds and the enrichment of their souls.
When American adults who are busy making money create the kinds of sweeping educational schemes we have now, they implicitly view young people's learning ?and young people themselves ?as a means to an end, the figures on a balance sheet. And too often they don't even care enough to spend sufficient time or money on education. The No Child Left Behind initiative, which might better be called "no child left unclassified and not appropriately employed," is a case in point. When American kids start to get "left behind" (in most countries with big tests, that's what the tests are for), we can assume that parents with the means and education will be lined up to yell about it. But when federal funds get withdrawn from schools that fail, where will those already-beleaguered schools turn? How will their low-income students find another school?
If America winds up with the diminished role in the world and leaner standard of living that the new global economy may offer, there may be far fewer American parents with means and education. And one can bet that far more people will fall into line behind rigorous national testing. They will have no choice, as is the case today in China and in many other lands. My Chinese students always say: "That's how it is, with so many people and so little money. That's just how it is."
For now, we Americans can make all the tests we want. Kids will never be "lean and hungry" in a fat society. And the egotism of infinite possibility will never prevail against the fierce capacity for self-abnegation in the Asian psyche.
Isn't there another way that America can use its prosperity, not to build empires, but to enhance the quality of its people's lives? How China will use its eventual prosperity remains to be seen. We can hope, however, that its choices will not help prove the axiom that countries attaining prosperity and democracy must become effete, stratified and sometimes arrogant.
The author maintains an e-mail account at alfonso.orsini@gmail.com.
The article below addresses the differences in social context between PRC students and those in America. It discounts the No Child Left Behind program based on these differences. However, it implies that American schools must change.
Missing from discussion is the strong motivation in China -- under a communist dictatorship -- to move in some small way up the economic ladder. Implied (by listing the costs) is the value of such an education.
This article will be taken by proponents of our bankrupt system to mean that the social differences are responsible for the higher scores in China -- therefore scores may be ignored. This is not a correct reading of the article's content.
Indeed, the author concludes by suggesting that for our own dismal schools there must be another way. In America, the only other way is full competitive choice.
People hoping to intelligently debate this issue must be familiar with the article.
Pete Speer
The below article was reprinted with the permission of Dr. Orsini
-------------------------------------------
Illinois School Board Journal
January/February 2006
Big tests, big sticks
Social context of high-stakes
testing in China and U.S.
by Alfonso J. Orsini
Alfonso J. Orsini is director of the Western International School of Shanghai and a former special English teacher in Qingdao, China. His article first appeared in Education Week, July 13, 2005, and is reprinted with permission from the author.
This past school year, I have been teaching English for a special program at a public school in China. The experience has made me think a lot about the push toward high-stakes testing in the United States, especially with the impetus of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
China is a country that promises to change the economic face of the globe in the years ahead. It has an incredibly lean, mean education machine. American policymakers, seeing embarrassing data such as the poor showing of U.S. students on recent international assessments in science and math, say they want to prepare our children to meet the global competition posed by countries like China.
If the No Child Left Behind law is meant to do that ?to help us compete with countries that have used big tests for a long time to scientifically weed and stratify their citizens ?the plan will fail. This is not just because of the problems inherent in creating and enacting such tests, but also because of the differing social, economic and cultural contexts that surround such tests.
Here is what the United States is up against. In China, all of the items on American business interests' education agenda are in evidence. There is a focus on the "useful" subjects of math, science and technology. There are large, economical classes of 50 to 60 students each. This works fine in China, because the students here are driven, and their teachers mostly lecture. (Their bow to modernization is in using a computer beamer instead of the blackboard.)
Walking through a Chinese classroom, you hear students chanting a lot in unison. The teachers are well-trained, in that they follow the script of slavishly preparing for the big exams. While they teach only about 10 classes a week, they must be in the school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily to prepare. Some big exam ?schoolwide, citywide or nationwide ?is always looming. The school's headmaster even assigns teachers research papers. They comply because they want to get a promotion, perhaps a merit raise of 200 yuan ($24) added on to a monthly salary of, say, 2,000 yuan ($242) for a veteran.
Office talk is often about "grammar points" that may appear on an exam. The exams must have a number of virtually impossible questions to keep teachers and students scrambling, and to allow the remarkable few to rise to the top. If students do poorly, it comes back to haunt the teacher and the school. Last year, the local newspaper asked why fewer graduates at my school had been admitted to top universities. That heightened the anxiety.
Another numerically based improvement has been enacted here: more class time. At my boarding school (the stronger public schools in China are boarding), students are in the classroom from late August to late July, six days a week, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:25 p.m., with a 1?hour lunch/nap break and a five-minute eye-massage break led by a woman's peppy, almost militaristic voice broadcast over the public address system.
After some sports, dinner and time to do laundry by hand (we all do laundry by hand here), the students are back in the classroom for study from 6:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., with monitoring chiefly done by students and only a few teachers roving the halls. When evening study concludes, it's back up to the dorm to wash up with a basin; there are no hot showers. Then, eight kids bed down in each 9-by-12-foot room.
My kids are from a higher socioeconomic bracket. Their parents are paying 24,000 yuan ($2,900) extra, on top of the regular tuition of 3,000 yuan ($362) per year. I am preparing them to pass the new English entrance exam for a Canadian university. They got into this school only because they paid extra for the special program. With rising prosperity, these kinds of educational back doors, including Australian and United Kingdom foundation-year programs, are popping up all over.
My students, always weary but still cheerful, have never dated, never camped or been to a dance, and have almost never traveled. In a paired-discussion exercise in which they had to find something interesting about a classmate, everyone was astounded that a boy called Nick had danced with a girl at his aunt's wedding. In our town of Qingdao, one of the hottest places to be on a Saturday or Sunday is not the shopping mall but the Xin Hua bookstore.
The educational rigor in China results from the social context. Only about 48 percent of rural residents and 79 percent of urban residents attain more than a primary school education. Of the 27 million students completing the "compulsory" grade 9, around 25 percent go into a three-year academic high school program and 18 percent go into vocational training. Of those 6.67 million who go to academic high schools, around 3.5 million will make it to a four-year university program. The statistics are harsher in some areas. In Beijing, 49 percent of 18- to 22-year-olds are enrolled in postsecondary studies, but in places like Yunan Province, fewer than 9 percent are enrolled.
But this doesn't mean that the Chinese don't value education. There are 310 million people in schools at all levels here, including over a million studying through TV university. The number of university students in China has grown from 1.08 million in 1998 to more than 17 million in 2003. And the Chinese government has just launched a program to send 5,000 college teachers overseas each year for doctoral study or research.
China has a cheap, willing workforce composed partly of the 310 million surplus workers from the rural provinces, only 180 million of whom found jobs in 2003. It also has a cheap, well-trained professional class. Doctors earn perhaps 2,000 yuan ($242) a month, beginning teachers maybe 1,000 yuan ($121). People live remarkably frugal lives. China is progressing not through empire building or aggression, but because it has people willing to do virtually any work with incredible patience and persistence to survive. And it is selling this, the cheapest labor in the world, to all takers, including many U.S. investors. It is also building cooperative ties with Canada, Europe and Latin America, and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations group, which will create a free-trade zone of 2 billion people.
U.S. business leaders, in their urgent push to whip American education into line, may be among the few in our country who are truly aware of how things are outside the United States. They have a concrete motivation to be aware: money. And they may be seeing, correctly, that the peaceful threat posed by China and others developing nations requires that we do something differently. Some might say that a first step should be lowering the salaries of business executives. But if my perspective from China is valid, then a more general "leaning" of America may have to happen before big tests are widely tolerated by U.S. students and their families.
Big, consequential tests run up against a lot of obstacles in America. One of them is fundamental ?what the historian Richard Hofstadter labeled in his influential book as Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Others include the distraction posed by the cultural excesses that assault American kids every day and the fact that U.S. students know there is a college in America for just about anyone who can pay for it. But beyond such problems, I wonder if American kids sometimes don't care about study because they sense that many adults don't care about them ?about the life of their minds and the enrichment of their souls.
When American adults who are busy making money create the kinds of sweeping educational schemes we have now, they implicitly view young people's learning ?and young people themselves ?as a means to an end, the figures on a balance sheet. And too often they don't even care enough to spend sufficient time or money on education. The No Child Left Behind initiative, which might better be called "no child left unclassified and not appropriately employed," is a case in point. When American kids start to get "left behind" (in most countries with big tests, that's what the tests are for), we can assume that parents with the means and education will be lined up to yell about it. But when federal funds get withdrawn from schools that fail, where will those already-beleaguered schools turn? How will their low-income students find another school?
If America winds up with the diminished role in the world and leaner standard of living that the new global economy may offer, there may be far fewer American parents with means and education. And one can bet that far more people will fall into line behind rigorous national testing. They will have no choice, as is the case today in China and in many other lands. My Chinese students always say: "That's how it is, with so many people and so little money. That's just how it is."
For now, we Americans can make all the tests we want. Kids will never be "lean and hungry" in a fat society. And the egotism of infinite possibility will never prevail against the fierce capacity for self-abnegation in the Asian psyche.
Isn't there another way that America can use its prosperity, not to build empires, but to enhance the quality of its people's lives? How China will use its eventual prosperity remains to be seen. We can hope, however, that its choices will not help prove the axiom that countries attaining prosperity and democracy must become effete, stratified and sometimes arrogant.
The author maintains an e-mail account at alfonso.orsini@gmail.com.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
School Choice Gaining Ground Across Country
For more great information on school choice visit The Heritage Foundation The article below appeared on FoxNews.com.
School Choice Gaining Ground Across Country
Friday, February 10, 2006
By Dan Lips
Supporters of school choice in Arizona must feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
And they must think of Gov. Janet Napolitano as Lucy -- pulling away the ball once again.
During budget negotiations last summer, Gov. Napolitano agreed to provide $5 million in tax credits for corporations contributing to private-school scholarship funds for low-income students who now attend public schools.
The governor -- long opposed to school choice -- explained at a news conference that “the $5 million tax credit was not a bad price to pay” to reach a budget compromise.
But days later, Napolitano changed her mind and vetoed the measure. She told the Arizona Republic she did this because the tax credit wouldn’t automatically “sunset,” as she had requested in the negotiations.
Jim Weiers, then the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, couldn’t believe his ears. “There's only one way to put this,” he said. “The governor lied to me.”
Who to believe?
Consider this: On Jan. 11 of this year, the state legislature again passed tax credits for school choice. And this time, it included the sunset provision Gov. Napolitano had requested. A few days later, Gov. Napolitano vetoed the measure again. This time, she said she will consider a tax credit only during budget negotiations in the spring.
So, choice supporters will have to try again this summer to expand education opportunity for Arizona’s low-income students. Assuming the legislature can pass tax credits a third time, Gov. Napolitano will have to decide again whether to honor her promise or veto this popular program yet again.
It’s not an easy calculation. She must strike a balance between the demands of the 30,000-member Arizona Education Association, which opposes school choice, and Arizona families, who support school choice by nearly a 2:1 margin, according to a recent poll by the Goldwater Institute. Already, 100,000 children in Arizona attend charter schools or private schools, thanks to a 1997 scholarship tax-credit program.
The governor’s fellow Democrats are siding with the underprivileged in increasing numbers. In Washington, D.C., Democratic Mayor Anthony Williams and Sens. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. provided critical support for the District’s new voucher program.
Last year, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell approved legislation to expand the state's private-school tax-credit program. And in New Jersey, a coalition of Democratic state legislators is pushing a school voucher program to help poor, inner-city children.
Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat, faces a similar quandary. Like Napolitano, he faces re-election in 2006 and must choose between the educational establishment and students. Wisconsin is home to the Milwaukee school-voucher program -- perhaps the most successful choice program in the nation. This program helps 15,000 low-income, inner-city children attend private school and has been shown to boost graduation rates.
The Milwaukee voucher program has proven so popular that there aren’t enough scholarships to meet popular demand. The program limits participation to 15 percent of the student population. Gov. Doyle has vetoed several proposals to raise the cap, which means thousands of inner-city children now in the program could be sent back to public schools this fall under the state's system for rationing vouchers.
The school-choice movement is nothing new. It’s been clamoring for alternatives to failing public schools for more than 20 years now. As successes, such as those in Milwaukee, mount, so does public support.
Lawmakers can’t treat the issue like Lucy does that football. Ultimately, they won’t be able to pull it away at the last minute. Then, they’ll have to make a stand. And what will it be: Will these leaders stand with the teachers’ unions or with underprivileged families?
Dan Lips is a policy analyst who specializes in education issues at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based public policy research institute.
School Choice Gaining Ground Across Country
Friday, February 10, 2006
By Dan Lips
Supporters of school choice in Arizona must feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
And they must think of Gov. Janet Napolitano as Lucy -- pulling away the ball once again.
During budget negotiations last summer, Gov. Napolitano agreed to provide $5 million in tax credits for corporations contributing to private-school scholarship funds for low-income students who now attend public schools.
The governor -- long opposed to school choice -- explained at a news conference that “the $5 million tax credit was not a bad price to pay” to reach a budget compromise.
But days later, Napolitano changed her mind and vetoed the measure. She told the Arizona Republic she did this because the tax credit wouldn’t automatically “sunset,” as she had requested in the negotiations.
Jim Weiers, then the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, couldn’t believe his ears. “There's only one way to put this,” he said. “The governor lied to me.”
Who to believe?
Consider this: On Jan. 11 of this year, the state legislature again passed tax credits for school choice. And this time, it included the sunset provision Gov. Napolitano had requested. A few days later, Gov. Napolitano vetoed the measure again. This time, she said she will consider a tax credit only during budget negotiations in the spring.
So, choice supporters will have to try again this summer to expand education opportunity for Arizona’s low-income students. Assuming the legislature can pass tax credits a third time, Gov. Napolitano will have to decide again whether to honor her promise or veto this popular program yet again.
It’s not an easy calculation. She must strike a balance between the demands of the 30,000-member Arizona Education Association, which opposes school choice, and Arizona families, who support school choice by nearly a 2:1 margin, according to a recent poll by the Goldwater Institute. Already, 100,000 children in Arizona attend charter schools or private schools, thanks to a 1997 scholarship tax-credit program.
The governor’s fellow Democrats are siding with the underprivileged in increasing numbers. In Washington, D.C., Democratic Mayor Anthony Williams and Sens. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. provided critical support for the District’s new voucher program.
Last year, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell approved legislation to expand the state's private-school tax-credit program. And in New Jersey, a coalition of Democratic state legislators is pushing a school voucher program to help poor, inner-city children.
Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat, faces a similar quandary. Like Napolitano, he faces re-election in 2006 and must choose between the educational establishment and students. Wisconsin is home to the Milwaukee school-voucher program -- perhaps the most successful choice program in the nation. This program helps 15,000 low-income, inner-city children attend private school and has been shown to boost graduation rates.
The Milwaukee voucher program has proven so popular that there aren’t enough scholarships to meet popular demand. The program limits participation to 15 percent of the student population. Gov. Doyle has vetoed several proposals to raise the cap, which means thousands of inner-city children now in the program could be sent back to public schools this fall under the state's system for rationing vouchers.
The school-choice movement is nothing new. It’s been clamoring for alternatives to failing public schools for more than 20 years now. As successes, such as those in Milwaukee, mount, so does public support.
Lawmakers can’t treat the issue like Lucy does that football. Ultimately, they won’t be able to pull it away at the last minute. Then, they’ll have to make a stand. And what will it be: Will these leaders stand with the teachers’ unions or with underprivileged families?
Dan Lips is a policy analyst who specializes in education issues at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based public policy research institute.
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