Morning Shorts
Friday, Mar 5, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Rates jump on some health plans for individuals in Illinois
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois, the state’s largest health plan, increased the base rate on one of its HMO plans by 20% last summer, according to the Illinois Division of Insurance.
UnitedHealthcare of Illinois, the No. 2 carrier locally, raised base rates on its HMO plan by 13% in December, the state’s data show.
* School funding a ‘huge crisis,’ state school superintendent warns
* School chiefs’ pay up amid cuts above
* Hundreds speak out on proposed Dist. 200 cuts
* District 158 goes from surplus to deficit, so board says we must cut
* Board cuts 16 teachers to plug $3.5M deficit
* Pension liability threatens future of cities, state
* Daley picks ex-Marine to lead disaster management agency
* Daley fine with alderman appointing own inspector general
Daley rejected the notion that creating two inspectors general — one to police the executive branch, the other to bird-dog aldermen — would create another level of bureaucracy taxpayers can ill afford.
* Mayor Daley dismisses talk of a Teamsters truck drivers strike
“You know what? There’d be 50,000 people applying for these jobs,” Daley said. “I mean, there’s so many people out of work. If you were ever to open employment, there’d be 50,000. These are good-paying jobs. Everybody would like to not work and get two hours’ pay.
* Dart closes parts of Cook County Jail
* Illinois a finalist in school ‘Race’
* Illinois advances in bid for Race to the Top funds
* State may receive part of stimulus funding to help schools
* Opinion: U of I board should rethink Ringeisen deal
* U of I faculty march to protest dwindling funds
* Schools stress over ISAT, hope students don’t
* Aurora planning 20-year, $151 million sewer improvement
* Will County pay freeze backed
That means the new treasurer and county clerk still will make $93,116, and the new sheriff will make $110,923. The new county board members will each get $23,000.
* Slim raises for North Aurora public works staff
Laborers’ pay starts at $18.68 an hour and will rise to $19.24 on June 1, 2011. The foremen and water operators start at $23.59 an hour and rise to $24.31 by the third year. Top pay for the most experienced laborers in 2011 will be $26.73 an hour; for foremen and water plant operators, $32.40.
* Hanover Park wind turbine one step closer
* Galesburg dispatch gets boost
The Federal Communication Commission is requiring all law enforcement departments to use split-band frequencies that will allow for both UHF and VHF frequencies. Currently, the Galesburg Police Department uses UHF only, while the Galesburg Fire Department and Knox County Sheriff’s Department use VHF.
* Calhoun County considers withholding state money
Calhoun County officials say that since the state of Illinois is late with the $107,000 it owes them, they may withhold payments to the state.
* Alderman wants more transparency in city government, offers list of ideas
* [Rockford] Mayor: New technology campus will help foster business growth
* State of city by the numbers
Thanks to Mayor Larry Morrissey’s State of the City speech tonight, we were able to do a by-the-numbers approach to problems and opportunities facing Rockford. And we were glad he didn’t forget to count the city’s blessings,
* Proposed bill will expand fire safety requirements in nursing homes
- wordslinger - Friday, Mar 5, 10 @ 8:10 am:
It’s not just teachers and administrators who stress over ISATS. In my experience, third- and eighth-graders feel it too, as a lot of the learning in the weeks approaching the tests are geared to the exams.
Real estate interests sweat it, too. The difference in the price of a home in a “good school” vs. a “bad school” can be significant.
- Carl Nyberg - Friday, Mar 5, 10 @ 8:11 am:
There are multiple school districts in Illinois with the same number. So unless you are deliberately trying to be ambiguous or cryptic you should use the name of the school district or the communities served.
- PalosParkBob - Friday, Mar 5, 10 @ 8:48 am:
Once again the state board of education refuses to acknowledge the true root causes of the “fiscal crisis” in Illinois education; escalating salaries and benefits FAR exceeding reasonable rate of inflation levels and unfair mandates on the public education system.
A telling statistic was released in the NEA “Rankings” report for 2009. While Illinois ranks about 30th in operational expenditures per student, Its instructional staff has the 8th highest salaries.
According to the report, there is one teacher for every 14.4 students in Illinois, while expense leading California has only one teacher for every 20.9 students. This imbalance is clearly caused by the Educational Labor Relations Act which heavily favors the wants of the unions over the needs of the children and taxpayers.
The fiscal issues in Illinois schools can’t be addressed until a number of structural changes to Illinois public education are made to moderate the skyrocketing (and unsustainable)cost increases:
1) Since salaries and benefits make up about 75% of school budgets, the state must give the local school boards the power, and responsibililty,to say NO to unfair union demands. This can be accomplished by prohibiting teacher strikes as is done in 41 other states, and prohibiting school boards from giving salary and benefit increases exceeding new unrestricted revenues. A contract clause could be made mandatory by the state that raises would be reduced to a percentage of available revenues whenever contractural agreements exceed that amount.
2)The state must mandate that those “end of career” sweeteners be prohibited to provide fair pension levels, and all “rollover” of sick and vacation days past two years should be prohibited.
3) Some sanity and market value parameters need to instituted, such as limits in how much difference in pay can be allowed for two people doing the same job. Clearly, “equal pay for equal work” is a concept in public compensation that is very desirable. For example, paying a 54 year old recalcitrant teacher $150K for doing the same job as a 28 year old teacher for $40K is bad for the system, and certainly not conducive to keeping the young “type A” teacher personalities in public education. A reasonable spread of about 50% would certainly seem fair, unless some other discrimator than seniority or education can be established.
4) We need to reassess the value of those advanced degrees and seniority in public K-12 education. There is very little data correlating seniority and advanced degrees vs student performance in Illinois. That is. of course, intentional.Studies in North Carolina show very little value for advanced degrees in education in elementary schools, especially when teachers obtain Masters later than 5 years after the staret teaching. That should be reflected in education policy.
5) We need to end the “prevailing wage” mandate to end REQUIRING schools to pay far above market rates for maintenance and construction, which makes up about 10-15% of school budgets.
Until the Board and GA start seriously studying these issues and take conrete action, any additional funding will simply be ravenously devoured by the public educational bureaucracy without creating financial stability or improving educational quality.
The fact that real reform of the fiscal structure of public education in Illinois is not on the table speaks volumes about why this crisis continues to fester.