Posted on February 29, 2012
A proposal to shift teacher pension costs from the state to local school districts is opposed by Edwardsville’s school superintendent and its state representative.
Gov. Pat Quinn raised the issue Feb. 22 in his budget address to the General Assembly. He said that only 22 percent of the state’s $5.2 billion in pension expenses this year is for state employees.
The state makes about $7 million a year in pension contributions for teachers and administrators employed in Edwardsville School District 7, Superintendent Ed Hightower said Monday. District 7 contributes another $3 million a year.
While no legislation has yet been introduced, Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, has put forth a proposal. “Early estimates indicate that annual school district contributions would rise from a total of $171 million per year to more than $700 million per year, while the state’s annual contribution would drop from $2 billion to $1.3 billion,” according to an analysis of his position by the Teachers Retirement System.
“Springfield has created a real mess,” said first-term Rep. Dwight Kay, R-Glen Carbon. “They don’t know how to fix it, so they want to download the inefficiencies” on local school districts.
“It’s easier to cut and run than it is to fix the problems,” Kay said. The governor and legislature should “step up to responsibilities to taxpayers and teachers.”
Both the House and Senate leadership, controlled by Democrats, “want to push it down to the local level,” Kay said. “That’s just not right.”
Kay met Monday with school superintendents from the 112th House District, one of a series of scheduled sessions. Not surprisingly, ideas about how to eliminate “unfunded mandates” and pension reform suggestions were on the administrators’ minds. Hightower said abruptly shifting state pension costs “would be just devastating to the school districts and communities across Illinois.”
“When people are hurting like this,” as a result of high unemployment and the continuing housing crisis, “(it) is not the time to shift all of these added costs to the school districts,” Hightower said.
Hightower ticked off the list of economic bad news that his district has dealt with over the past five years:
• General state aid has dropped $7.2 million.
• Equalized assessed valuation (the district’s tax base) has decreased $107,000, reversing years of gains.
• School bus costs reduced $1.5 million (over three years) due to reduced state reimbursements. In addition to the $9 million whacked from District 7’s budget over the past three years, the board is looking next month to cut spending next year another $3 million, which could lead to the elimination of as many as 34 teaching and administrative positions.
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