Take a drive around Deerfield sometime and see the vacant commercial buildings.

genius. do me a favor and stay in deerfield. if mr. greenberg were so smart, how come he does not sit on any city council or board. at least 112 puts every piece of info on its website, including all salaries of not only teachers but administrators.

I'll comment wherever and whenever I want but thanks for playing.

Check out the final offers. The teachers have already offered to change the health insurance plan to save the District over $460,000 each year. These plan changes will result in higher out of pocket costs to each teacher.

Furthermore, this district only pays 25% of family coverage to begin with. The teachers aren't asking for anything more.

Lastly, the District wants to throw over 30 part-time teachers completely off of its insurance.

Mark:

Thanks for the info. As to part time teachers, I would think it depends as to how part time they are just as it does in the private sector.

The District's current offer eliminates ALL insurance for anyone not working full time. Even if they work 90%, they are offered NO insurance coverage unless the teacher picks up 100% of the cost.

Mark,

For someone that does contract law for over 30 years, and is also a cpa and financial planner, i think you need to read the offers more closely and take a better look at the numbers. if i had a client that was bleeding cash like the school district, i would suggest to reduce hours, mandatory pay cut and or furlough days and pass on a greater share of their health insurance costs.

You need to look at the "Annual Financial Reports," not the unaudited budget information that they feed you. These are the audited reports.

This District has continued to put money into its "working cash" funds to the point that there are over $12,000,000 there. When the report is availalble for this year, it will show that another $265,000 was socked away. It will also show a surplus of approximately $2,000,000 in all funds.

O for God sake folks Mark Stein is the IEA rep. He make his living from dues paid by the teachers. You will never hear anything but union Propaganda from him.......

Joe, the reason that you know who I am is that I don't hide it. Unlike you and many others, I post under my full name. I've mentioned my postion with IEA in other posts.

I also cite facts and don't bother with name calling. The District's Annual Finacial Report is availalble on line. The last I looked, it's on the District web site. If you don't want to believe what I wrote, look at the report for yourself.

In a post below, you compare teachers to the people that cut your grass. I think that says it all about where you are coming from.

it is also on the district website

Teachers wont leave. District 112 teachers will be among the highest paid under this proposal. What you don't look at was the horrible contract the school board agreed to last time. That included a 17% raise when inflation over that period was 4% and agreeing to pay over 50% of the health care premiums for family members. It seems that everyone in the community has to sacrifice except for teachers.

The 17% is not quite accurate, that number includes teachers that received raises for continuing education (such as earning new teaching certificates and masters degrees). The average raise for teachers was actually 13.8% if they did not earn any raise for continuing education. This did happen to exceed the revenue increases, which is why the teachers offered to tie future raises to the percentage increase of revenue. Here's more info about their proposal:
http://district112teachers.org/contract-issues/salary/

Also, that same page shows how District 112 teacher salaries compare to surrounding districts on the north shore. Not as favorably as the District tries to paint.

they should have the same insurance coverage as exists in the private sector - with high deductible, high copays and a drug plan with higher copays. what makes the teachers so special

daniel - can you predict the future? how could anyone know the future. it is what it is. but 3 years later, things are not only worse, but who knows when things will ever be better

Mr HP-

Those are exactly the reasons why the teachers have come to the table with major changes to the insurance plan. The salary proposal is also an attempt to help face the unknown future with its ties to future revenue increases.

Ouch! This is the kind of double dipping that is sucking up money and bankrupting States and Municipalities while we the taxpayers pay and pay and pay! No problem with an earned pension but it should either kick in at the same age as SS or should be deducted out of the salary if the person takes on another publicly funded position.

lets see a teacher works 10 months of the year, never works on weekends, leaves when school is over, unless they get a payment for some after school program. Most principals and administrators work a lot more hours and work year round.

Mr. HP,
You have absolutely NO IDEA what you are talking about! Have you ever looked at a parking lot at the schools in the early morning hours? Teachers are there LONG before the day (officially) starts and ends every day.... Every day! ... working long beyond the school day. Teachers work from home most nights, responding to emails from parents and staff, grading work, preparing lessons, purchasing food for their students to eat the next day and most certainly work on weekends too. Ask the district - the teachers fought for weekend access hours to be extended so that they could be in their classrooms on Saturdays and Sundays, WORKING! And, one more fact you have wrong, not all principals work 12 months - there are several with a ten month contract in NSSD112. No doubt they work hard too. I'm astonished to read your comments and saddened that is your perception because it is very far from accurate.

Replying to Mr. HP ...
You have swallowed the grossly inaccurate view of the time teachers put in. I came into teaching out of over 30 successful years in the corporate world ... and have never worked so hard in my life. It's not unusual to string together several weeks of 14 to 18 hours days in a row (including weekends). In the corporate world, the standard is to prep 3 hours for every hour spent giving a seminar. Let's say we teach 5 hours a day. That expectation would amount to 15 hours of prep time plus the 5 hours of teaching ... every day. Do the math. I work evenings, weekends, during the summer, and on my days off to make sure I can provide students with feedback on work they have done, stay current with educational methodology, and provide the best content I can to my class. Maybe we do only work 10 months out of the year (at least visibly) ... but we pack MORE than 12 months of work into that time. What hours do you work? What do you get paid? Do you get bonuses, matching contributions to a 401(k), profit sharing, stock options? Teachers get none of that and are paying about 10% of their salary into retirement benefits. We pay out of pocket for items in the classroom (no reimbursement) and for course work we take for certification. So please be careful when you spout out about something you think is true but is only based on here-say and limited knowledge. One thing is true though - the input I give to children can be life changing - and I would do no less!

The teachers have agreed to make adjustments to the insurance plans, including an increase in copay, deductible and out of pocket expenses. This alone is projected to safe a total of nearly $500,000 per year for the District (with around $350,000 strictly from the insured teachers).

The District's current proposal offers a 1% increase in pay (2 x 0.5%) for teachers that earn a masters degree. A new teacher starting out at around $41,000 would need 28 YEARS to pay off a $15,000 masters degree since the District offers a choice of tuition reimbursement ($1,200 per year) or a salary increase (0.5% for every 18 hours of credit).

That plus the elimination of the masters lane would effectively stop teachers from seeking higher degrees. Is that what people really want? Now if you want to argue that "I paid for my masters and didn't get an automatic raise" you have to understand that you got your masters to get a promotion, which you most likely will get. Teachers don't get a promotion...ever, unless of course they want to move into administration. They are in the same classroom every day. The only way to increase their pay is to get a higher degree. If you support the elimination of the masters lane then you MUST agree that higher degrees for teachers are not required.

I am not oppossed to higher education, inparticularly where there are specialties involved. My thoughts for an automatic increase are again in specialty areas where the added degree adds real value, we should compensate. I would think that compensation should be built into the salary for the specialty position. We do not have to have equal pay just as in the private sector there can be varied pay for the same position. However, for general subjects I am unsure how the higher degree has much impact at the elementary level.

To me, commitment, passion and dedication trump higher degrees. While I know that in the current system it cannot happen, I am also for evaluating the teachers and paying the upper tier more money, median group median monies and culling the bottom. That way if we are going to really support our teachers and ensure they have excellent packages, we are supporting the best ones and ones that prove their worth. We can then pick up great teachers from the pool out there looking for opportunity. In private practice we try to hire and retain the best, fire and hope the bottom tier go to work for our competition....IE Lake Forest....:)

This statement is untrue, the ability to raise and collect taxes is based upon cpi and new construction. Each taxing district has a multiplier, up to a certain level. District 112 is no where their limit. Thus, the county is able to change the multiplier to the point where the district will continually get their new money each year based upon the cpi and new construction. Once again, your statement is based upon your misunderstanding.

The District also chose to only mention new construction in passing...calling it "very minor revenue". What they don't mention is that since the tax cap went into place, the average new construction percentage was nearly 1.92%. This combined with the CPI rate of 2.46% paints a different picture of what new money is coming in to the district.

The the average new construction percentage is interesting, but not useful to this discussion. Do you have the values for each of the last 4 years? These are the numbers that would be applicable to this years negotiations. I would be interested in your forecast for the nest 4 years.

This is what is astounding. District 112 goes out and hires one of the largest abusers of the state retirement system and then expects us to trust him? Considering his press over the past few years, the district should have avoided him like the plague. I say take his $160,000 and divide it among the teachers. Money better spent.

The relevant questions with respect to Mr. Dada are (1) is he competent at what he does? and (2) how does his salary compare with similar financial administrators in the area and with the prior Asst. Superintendant for Finance, Greg Kurr? According to FamilyTaxPapers.org, Mr. Kurr made $245,000 in 2011.

Having been to several meetings with Mr. Kurr and having tried to work (mostly unsuccessfully) with Mr. Kurr on several issues as the Treasurer of the Lincoln PTA, I can tell you just by reviewing Mr. Dada’s presentation at the last School Board meeting that Mr. Dada is probably twice as good at his job as Mr. Kurr. And, at $160,000, we are paying him 1/3 less. Sounds like good value to me.

Bob needs a hug.

I am in agreement with Walter Hainsfurther; I would strongly disagree with the demonizing of the individual teachers. It is the lies of their union that we must defend against, The NEA and the American Federation of Teachers. As these unions have gained strength over the last 4 decades the education of our children has fallen in equal proportion. These unions continue to block reforms needed to improve our nation’s schools by putting their focus on teachers rather than on the students they teach. Continually throwing money at education has been a dismal failure. Follow the money to understand public education. Money is power. Our nation has spent more than a trillion dollars since 1980 increasing teacher salaries, the number of teachers, and health and retirement benefits. The NEA contributed $3 million to political campaigns, 97 percent to democrat candidates. President Obama and Arne Duncan, secretary of education, who both have their children in private schools, are aware that the democrat party's political fortune is beholden to the support of the NEA special interests. The focus of government funding should change from financing and appeasing unions to improving education for all students.

Teachers are paid well and have been asked to make little, if any, sacrifices in this bad economy. They work 9 months a year, have plenty of days off. Hard to feel sorry for them.

Honestly if you can’t understand this problem from the top to the bottom, that includes Mike Madigan and the legislator that are about to push the states liability on to homeowners. If you don’t understand how big unions work on levels from national to local maybe you should not comment. Unions like IEA are out pushing for increases, before IL passes the largest tax increase in our history.

Richard is correct. Your beef with the unions, and obviously Democrats, has no place in this discussion. If you want to offer a thought on this particular situation, by all means do so. Otherwise, keep your partisanship to yourself.

Boohoo, How about the Mexican gentleman that cut you grass, should they not make 70,000 they work harder and longer hours. I see no one gives a rats tail if they even have worker comp more or less retirement and health insurance.

Wendy: What Mr. HP describes is exactly what is going to happen in Chicago. They got their raise but the real issue is going to be school closings, layoffs and increased class size. The same thing can happen here. Revenues are stagnant, taxes are high and increases , whether you like it or not, will not be popular or have a good chance of passing in a referendum.

While Mr. HP could have said it more eloquently, he isn't wrong.

In this economy, you can't have it all. You can't have small class sizes, 11 school buildings, teachers who seek to obtain reimbursement for advanced degrees AND keep taxes the same. It's not possible. Other districts of our size operate seven or eight buildings, not 11. If we were to close 3-4 schools, there would be more money to pass around, but we'd likely see larger class sizes, less programs of choice (for example, dual language in one building instead of five), and less individualized attention for our kids.

Amy:

Operating 11 buildings has not made sense for a long time. In 1994-95 Rick Heineman and I led a task force that looked at the options for handling the space issues faced by the (Then new) district. That process and the 33 options presented were villified by a number of the parent groups and tossed out by the Board. The Board opted for the politically expedient option of adding to almost every building.

The issue here is that once you decide to close buildings, someone has to change. In this town, change is fine for everyone else. Until that changes, we'll never make progress. If you want to see how deep a problem this is, just ask why we have two elementary schools 500 feet apart.

Despite all the whining about it, the fact is that the school borders NEED to be reviewed and changed. How is it possible within the same school district to have some schools with class sizes of 14-15 and others with over twenty for the same grade level. It's not right.

Also, the sacred cow of the the dual language program also need to addressed. It is an option for which everyone is forced to pay. Perhaps those who love it so should pick up the tab for this program which I am yet to be convinced does anything other than having participants feel superior to everyone else.

Tripp & Ernest, you are exactly right, and that's exactly my point. You can't have everything. We want to keep our top school status and our teachers happy - well then something else has to give!

Our school board needs to stand up and unilaterally make some decisions without worrying about which part of HP will whine the loudest. They need to stop worrying about being popular and bowing down to the people with the loudest voices. Do the lines need to be redrawn? Without a doubt. Schools are falling apart, yet we have classes with under 15 kids all over the district. Do we need to reconfigure dual language? YES! Why it needs to run in five schools is beyond me!

Last year, the board proposed some changes to DL that would have made it more cost-effective. The DL community went up in arms to stop it, even going so far as to create a Facebook page, telling people to write in a vote daily on a Patch poll so as to skew the numbers in their favor.

In my opinion, closing a school(s), redrawing lines or looking at how to make programs more cost effective is certainly preferable to losing our excellent teachers. Like I said, you can't have it all. Something has to give.

Tripp and Richard, why could District 112 (and its predecessor districts) afford 11 buildings back in the 1960s and 1970s but not now? What has changed in the “business model” between then and now? Has the tax base fallen or failed to keep up? Have State and Federal government mandates increased costs? Have compensation expenses risen faster than tax revenues? Are there more teachers and/or administrators working in the District? I ask these questions to you to better inform myself rather than to advocate a position

Now that everyone knows closing schools is politically a dead end. Finding a board that could reduce administration cost seems imposable. We have let almost all the maintains staff go and hired 1099 subs to replace them what is left. I believe allowing the teachers to go contractual and non-union is an option that must be looked into; Honestly the only one that loses is Mark Stien.

"The question of how these schools could be afforded before". First there was no tax cap. Taxes could be raised as needed. (not to suggest that this was a good thing). Next, The district with the excess schools was 108 in the southern part of the district. They did close schools when it was necessary, notably the Kennedy school on Clavey road. Red Oak used to be a middle school and the district offices were in that facility. Sherwood has fewer students also because a part of the student population was allowed to move to 109 in Deerfield. They did make the tough choices, but this stopped when consolidation happened. Also 107 closed down the green bay school. Dist 111 never had extra space in part due to their extreme financial difficulties.

Hi Davisusie, ahh a Union rep, Ok if you could site the data that would be cool. I am more pointing to Non Union Charter and larger districts that have gone contractual.