McHenry County Blog

As I read the articles and editorials about the Huntley school teachers requested salary increases, there is one element that both the Daily Herald and Northwest Herald are overlooking.

They caught the pay hikes and 100% insurance premium payment (90% for family), but they missed something more important.

It's the Teachers Retirement System angle.

Both paper's reporters are young. Most people don't start thinking about retirement and what they will receive in pension payments or from a 401(k)--the deferred compensation more likely today for everywhere but public employees--until they are 40.

At least, that was the case with me.

But there is one sentence in the union's contract proposal which is more important--as far as take home pay goes--than the salary hikes which both reporters and the editorial writers have focused on.

Ignoring it results in a severe underestimation of the size of the increase the union is seeking in take home pay.

In fact, ignoring the TRS angle causes both papers to underestimate the take home effect by about 50%, probably a bit more.

Here's the overlooked contract sentence:

From page 28, item 2:

The board shall contribute the full TRS payment for each member of the bargaining party.

(The sentence is not only in bold face type, but underlined in the teachers' union proposal.)

And, it probably should be so emphasized because it is so significant to take home pay.

No where is it costed out in the union proposal.

To get even the percentage and how it is broken down, I had to call the Teachers Retirement System.

Right now, the teachers have to pay the following with after tax dollars:

• 9.4% of salary to TRS for their pensions, plus


• an additional 4/10ths of one percent for the Early Retirement Option, plus


• an additional 0.84% to Teachers Health Insurance Security Fund.

That's 10.24% right off the top of every pay check.

As I mentioned, all of this is now paid with after tax dollars.

If the school board agreed to make the payments as an employee benefit, they would be tax free to the teachers. (I figured out how to do that for state employees in a couple of areas while I managed state employee benefits in the Jim Thompson administration.)

Since the school board's assuming such a payment would be an employee benefit, it would be tax free to the teachers.

And the more a teacher earned, that is, the higher a teacher's tax bracket, the more the proposed concession would be worth.

Including that percentage with the pay hikes figures mentioned in both the Daily Herald and Northwest Herald is how I concluded in my original article that the union was asking for more than a 20% pay hike.

Labels: Huntley Education Association, Huntley School District 158, Teacher Negotiations, Teacher Salaries