From Wirepoints comes this YouTube:
The logic is good except for implying merging grade and high school districts into unit school district will save money.
.Merging elementary with high school districts will not lead to a net savings.
Sure, there will be fewer administrators, but even AP figured out, when Pat Quinn pushed the idea, that teachers’ salaries will increase more than the savings in administrators’ salaries.
The reason?
The merged teachers union in a district will be dominated by grade school teachers, who are paid less than high school teachers. (A high school teacher, Gene Hoffman, wrote the Resource Equalizer State Aid to Education formula in 1973 or 74. probably explaining the difference.)
Hoffman’s law contained a requirement that high tax districts cut their property taxes, but during the next session that part of the law was repealed.
Back to the control of the new unions by grade school teachers.
No way high school salaries will be lowered.
What will happen is that grade school teachers’ salaries will be raised to those of the high school teachers.
The new union will demand that.
The result will be a net increase in expenditures.
Only way to get the money will be to raise real estate taxes.
