By: Diane Benjamin

I previously wrote about large increases in salaries reported to the Teachers Retirement System: https://blnnews.com/2022/05/21/this-needs-explained-by-unit-5-part-2/

Since not every employee of Unit 5 is a member of this pension fund, I also FOIA’d IMRF for salaries reported in 2019 and 2020 by Unit 5.

Tracking down who these people are would take forever, they are most like staff positions at various levels. Between 2019 and 2020 it also appears turnover is high.

I received a spreadsheet with 856 names.

• 80 of those people had wages in 2019, but not in 2020
• 104 had wages in 2020 but not in 2019
• 160 people had less income in 2020 than 2019, that likely indicates they quit.

That leaves 512 people who appear to have worked in both 2019 and 2020.

• 233 show salary increases of between 3.52% and 10.9%.
• 156 people were listed with percentages higher than 10.9%, lets assume they didn’t work a full year in 2019 and thus distorted the percent.
• Obviously not all fall in that category!
• 97 people had percentage increases between 1.05% and 3.48%.

Superintendent Weikle claims salary increases have been kept low. See this list, it sure doesn’t appear to be the truth. The list below are the 233 receiving over 3.5% and up to 10.9%.

If all the people receiving 6%-10% increases are distorted by turnover, Unit 5 is a terrible place to work.