By: Diane Benjamin
If you didn’t know, enrollment at ISU increased this year because many students received tuition breaks. ISU knows future enrollment will decrease because birth rates have declined, which means fewer kids will be available to fill seats. That doesn’t stop the faculty union from demanding more money. There’s an online video of people saying they want a “living wage.” That number, of course, is never defined.
This was posted on Facebook:

If the public schools your kids attend had merit pay, education would improve. Without it, no teacher is incentivized to be their best when the teacher in the next classroom isn’t. They get the same pay regardless of ability.
The ISU faculty wants to be mediocre. The school is deeply invested in DEI philosophy. Obviously, most of the faculty share the same indoctrination that students must endure to graduate: https://illinoisstate.edu/catalog/undergraduate/ideas/
See the 2024 ISU salaries here: https://www.openthebooks.com/members/employer-detail/?Id=74066&tab=1&Year_S=2024&pg=1
You have to jump to page 13 (100 per page) before salaries drop below $75,000.
Most people in the private sector strive for merit because they have to. Obviously, the faculty who voted to form a union don’t. I know the entire faculty doesn’t agree with this view. Unfortunately, the majority voted for a union, so the union represents them.
The ISU faculty isn’t teaching capitalism meritocracy. That won’t end well for graduates who’ve been taught they don’t have to compete.

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Are you the real Karl Sila?
Yep. A fake me probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of creating a login with an icon, though that’s not guaranteed.
This guy isn’t quiet though. He’s had issues (publicly) with the Town of Normal, and candidates. I think his own stupidity and carelessness will lead to his downfall. As for Kathleen Lorenz, admitting to a crime isn’t “integrity” it’s a desperate last-chance measure to keep votes.
(This reply was in reply to Mpeabody’s comment down, not Mr. Sila’s)
Here’s a good reference for ISU salaries, by individual, by year….
https://guides.library.illinoisstate.edu/salaries
Open the books come directly from databases where pensions are calculated. I prefer their numbers
True, but the one from Milner is the flat salary and doesn’t include any overloads, like Openthebooks does. Mine on Openthebooks shows optional overloads I’ve done during different years and doesn’t reflect my base salary. It looks like I go up and down. 🙂
Hey Diane, have you been paying attention to the Kathleen Lorenz 28,000 donation? I won’t get into it, but if you look at it closely you’ll find there’s a good story there. Pay attention to development, I have some theories. Dare I say quid pro quo?
Duh, popular in Normal
At the end of the recent WGLT interview it shows that Kathleen Lorenz’s mystery donor (Greg Shephard) does NOT want to get into the donation, but it was said that him and Kathleen “share a vision”. . . He goes on to talk about how families who own land in Normal have been waiting to develop land.
Moments after (by the same WGLT writer) it comes out that there is land (Essex) that is waiting to be approved. It’s been shut down before, and it looks like they’re back again trying to get it through.
$28,000 is crazy. A month before the campaign ends you may give hundreds, but $28,000 is the type of money that is more than yard signs or mailers. This is the type of money that looks like an investment.
Perhaps Mr. Shepherd wants to build on land and is not able to because either Normal won’t let him or because it’ll look bad that the mayor’s cousin is able to develop when other properties can’t. Maybe he donated almost $30,000 as an investment that (if it’s true) he’ll make back with properties. This looks shady, and just because the elections over doesn’t mean Lorenz should walk away without accountability. If even half of this is true, she should be out of public service.
Doubtful anyone will be held accountable. Lizzy Johnston wasn’t held accountable. Cody Hendricks won’t be held accountable either.
SBE is still investigating Liszt last I heard.
Except this is $28,000 illegally donated to Kathleen Lorenz that points to quid pro quo. There is no investigation really needed, it violates campaign laws and also leads to speculation of biased service no longer allied to the people.
Look Greg Shepherd up, there’s a bunch on him if you know where to look.
Democrats passed a bill to make it legal. Unethical yes, but this is Illinois
Housing development and construction is one of the most crooked professions there is. I can guarantee you that if true, Shepard isn’t and hasn’t been the only local developer paying off politicians and Lorenz isn’t the only one on the take. Where I now live, a local gravel miner as been paying off land owners, business owner and politicians for years. He was found guilty of colluding with other material handlers of a price fixing scheme back in the early 2000’s and never spent a day in jail and only paid a fine because he bought off a judge to stay out of the pokey. The locals say he owns judges, politicians, land owners and business owners and pays off anyone to get his way. The bidding process is usually rigged as well. Former city managers in BN always had their favorite developers and excavators that were always winning local bids. It wasn’t by accident.
Absolutely the worst thing done to education is TENURE, in my opinion. It’s obvious to me after reading the bargaining up date that the union couldn’t care less how effective a teacher is but rather how secure they are so they stay good dues payers. The union is for the union not the members and certainly not for the students.
The premise of boostattendance.org is absurd. I know someone who
told his principal he had to drop out but was told to only show up on
Fridays for exams and assignments and study at home; He was then told
to skip twelfth grade and go straight to college and his college did the same
in his junior year and sent him to an Ivy dental school, and he became
chief oral surgeon simultaneously for two counties. So we are supposed
to instead be concerned that teachers have more pay instead of helping
students? How do they reconcile thecontradicition of boostattendance.org with paperceiling.org?
The same with the silly claim about school supplies
donorschoose.org, play materials to satisfy schoolmarmish fantasy
games. And the librarians who go out of their way to make your
children (not only adults)
read banned books. These are the librarians who in the 1980s
began replacing serious graduate textbooks with videos and popular flash.
And organisations like universities and
libraries are using public subsidies to lobby for more public
subsidies. We need to replace the kerteachulas with robots.
We can’t keep taxing the elderly out of their homes to pay school taxes
to fund such shenanigans. These kerteachulas have no real world experience
and teach the wierdest misundertandings of reality but insist it is fact.