By Bill Zettler
I make this statement after reading a Jan 25th Daily Herald article about McHenry School District 15’s proposed referendum headlined “Tax Increase Plan Draws Little Ire”. I’m thinking “Big Ire” will show up quickly once taxpayers find out that the average salary increase for full-time District 15 employees who worked from 2001-2005 was 41%.
That’s right, while the average American taxpayer saw his salary go up 11% over those 4 years District 15 employee salaries increased by almost 4 times that amount. In fact 99.4 percent of District 15 employees (170 worked all 4 years) saw their salary go up by more than the Average American’s 11%.
Yep, I’m thinking “Big Ire” might say something like “Why do teachers get 41% when taxpayers are getting 11%?” Or “Why are we cutting music, art and extra curricular programs instead of salaries?” Or maybe “If Dist 15 employees got the same raises as taxpayers would we even be talking about a referendum or program cuts?”
This is just one more example, of many, that shows the Illinois Public School System has a monstrous spending problem not a funding problem. Control the spending problem, employee salaries, and the funding problem disappears.
That will be difficult, of course, because the monstrous grab for money by the teacher unions is concomitant with the monstrous grab for money by the politicians from the teachers unions (over $2 million to Blagojevich and Madigan alone).
So we must starve the teacher salary monster – vote “NO” on every referendum until Illinois politicians address the massive overspending occurring in our public schools.
Bill Zettler is the owner of a computer-consulting firm in Illinois and a contributor to ChampionNews.net. Click here to read more by Mr. Zettler.
