Voters in Hinsdale High School District 86 will be able to voice their opinion Nov. 4 on a matter that the new teachers contract settled for the short term, but may resurface.
The ballot for residents of District 86 will ask whether District 86 should continue to offer eligible teachers the opportunity to earn 6 percent salary increases in each of four school years prior to retirement?
That benefit was part of the Hinsdale High School Teachers ‘s previous contract and that of other Illinois school districts The contract the District 86 School Board approved earlier this month reduced the retirement incentive to 3 percent for the last four years a teacher works.
School Board member Jennifer Planson expects the results of the Nov. 4 advisory referendum to confirm what she suspects, “that most people don’t agree with having retirement bumps.” Besides raising retiring teachers’ salaries higher than they might otherwise be over their last four years, the salary bumps increase the amount of the person’s pension for the rest of their life.
In its early negotiations, the School Board sought to eliminate any retirement incentives, Planson said.
“We met sort of in the middle,” Planson said.
People’s vote on the referendum will not show whether they oppose all end-of-career salary hikes. Six percent was used in the wording of the referendum because that is the amount to which District 86 teachers were accustomed. It also is the maximum amount public school districts can award, without paying the additional pension costs themselves.
Planson expects state legislators, as part of the need to reform and reduce pension costs, may eliminate funding for pensions increases due to retirement incentives. If it does, the salary hikes would likely not be part of the collective bargaining when this contract expires June 30, 2016.
“Springfield is going to settle it for us,” Planson predicted.