By: Diane Benjamin
Before you see the analysis, see this link: https://ieanea.org/2026/02/23/illinoisans-strongly-support-public-education-are-against-ice-near-schools-and-federal-funding-cuts/
The questions were asked in a way to elicit the desired results. 69% believe funding for public schools should increase? Do the people in Carlock feel like that? Does anyone in the Unit 5 district think they need more money after passing the 1% Sales Tax increase and seeing their property tax bills? I guarantee it’s nowhere near 69% – especially when they see where their taxes are being spent. Keep reading.
Two Unit 5 teachers at the same school under investigation: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-02-24/normal-police-investigating-second-chiddix-teacher-after-alleged-inappropriate-conduct-with-a-student
Remember Jon White? He left Unit 5 after child abuse allegations for Champaign where he abused more kids. Do administrators know they can be charged for failure to report: https://www.news-gazette.com/news/3-former-educators-charged-in-jon-white-case-aftermath/article_ae4b47a4-f84f-5a3a-a1a4-e8459edc9428.html
Below are the Unit 5 salaries for fiscal year 2024-2025. Total compensation shown on the Unit 5 report doesn’t fit on the page so I took their data, deleted sick days and bonuses (which were all zero) , and squished the columns for the report below. I also sorted them by position instead of listing them alphabetically. The report is titled Certified Administrators and Teachers, this isn’t all employees.
Of course the salaries are higher now, but this is the latest information available. 1136 people are listed.
The first 152 are various administrators, superintendents, guidance counselors, psychologists, and nurses. Total salaries: $16,418,987.91.
3 Athletic Directors are listed – total $404,6014.14. What are these 3 doing to protect your kids from predators? What is the district doing other than burying information?
17 Teachers are listed as English as a Second Language – total salaries $1,341,949.51. That amount won’t be included in the official amounts Illinois spend on “immigrants”. 2 other teachers are listed as bilingual kindergarten – add $146,050.25 to the previous total.
38 people are mentioned as interventionists. Many are listed with reading, some math. I have no idea what they do. Remedial?
176 Teachers are listed as Special Ed. Those salaries total: $14,127,516.09. If I was paying Unit 5 property taxes, I’d be asking questions! How many students are Special Ed? Are they teaching “migrants” or are lots of students just needing extra help?
Another 52 people are listed as Teacher: Speech/Language/Pathologist. They total $4,763,379.72.
1 person is listed as Teacher – Transitional Bilingual: $74,308.70
19 people are listed as MTSS, some of those have interventionists listed with it. That pertains to State mandates for social emotional learning. See this website for more information: https://www.powerschool.com/blog/mtss/
The last person on the report is the UFEA President – Full Time Rel – $110,158.63. In my world the teachers union should be paying their representative’s salary. Of course, Unit 5 is in Illinois so taxpayers do.
I’m sure there are other interesting positions I didn’t list. I bet lots of them didn’t exist not that long ago.
How many positions pertain to teaching students under Illinois sanctuary state policies? Taxpayers deserve to know what they are paying for.
Those employee counts do not match what they reported to the federal government. This is self reported data for 2024-2025:
1,916 employees, 864 teachers, 1052 all other employees. So where are these missing 600 employees? Who is paying for them?
https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?Search=1&State=17&County=Mclean+County&ID2=1728620
That’s interesting!
I don’t see any secretaries and misc staff listed on their report.
Diane, I looked at the source of the first attachment that says – “Illinoisans strongly support public education.” https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14aQhxeEQLX/?
It was a poll of 1000 Illinoisans. This was not a poll to gather data or information, it’s what is called a “push poll”.
It’s essentially:
propaganda dressed up as research.
a message-delivery vehicle pretending to be a survey.
a tactic used to influence, not to learn.
It is easy to see by the questions that are asked and how they are asked that the whole thing is meant to shape public opinion about the need to spend more money on Illinois’ failed SEL/DEI education system.
The video the produced stated they weren’t necessarily voters
Yes. I’d like to know how many were teachers
Oh well don’t our leftist democrats state that illegals pay taxes I am certain that they pay more than enough to cover all the additional cost that are incurred with their non English speaking students in the classroom
Just saying, NOT!!!
A lot of ESL students here are from India/the Middle East. That is not to say that is the biggest ESL population (could be), but it would be notable in terms of why that program is so big in the district.
Unit 5 has a lot of salaries outside of the direct classroom. This is a big reason why our property taxes keep skyrocketing.
As for Carlock, to say that their good marks are not influenced by their extremely small class sizes would be preposterous. Ask any classroom teacher how much they could get done with 1/3 of the students. I’m guessing it would be a significant amount more. The key question would be if Carlock is actually underperforming when you look at money spent per student that attends there versus other schools. Increase every class by 10-20 students and see what happens.
Carlock wasn’t on he chopping block because they wanted referendum votes. However, it was silly to think that was not going to come up as expenses continue to rise.
Whoever is consulting or creating so called “Future” propaganda/promos strategy for the tax funded schools and county needs examined closely and ties to software and data handling and actual student benefit (besides so called tech, training and sports)
I can say with certainty Central Illinois is a huge test case for a lot of money and data funnel and colleges are huge participants and the students/parents- TOOLS and test rats.
The kids and taxpayers basically have and always will be test rats and funding resource for others bad metrics and quiet exploit.
The Carlock situation is just another rehashed marketing and sales job at taxpayer and student expense.
The ones enabling and implementing it all are paid for life after early retirement and there is strong college and alumni $$ ties. (Many foreign) The reimagine leaders/change mgt consultants/platforms are never questioned.
All being led by pay to play projects, data abuse and big orgs calling it future strategy and innovation “For The Good”.
Basically, it’s like a network marketing and pyramid scheme in essence and our taxes are easy $$ to manage and take with little accountability to anyone or disclosure when there is a problem. But the raises, promotions and bonus are generously dished out.
Call anything for the kids, future/safety/infrastructure, transformation, innovation or systems/data analytics and architecture/engineering and everyone is wowed and impressed.
This is honestly nothing new and the politicians and families involved are not either.
People don’t do a deep dive on anything. (especially systems, funding and metrics). If they did their loyalty may not be so much to these big orgs. This includes districts/schools admin, governance/compliance and school platforms/projects. The universities and elitist staff/leadership are key. $$
Good work Diane in this research and article. Meaningful and thought out info is hard to find around here!
Good points RealWorld! – I don’t know if you watched the video but anyone with 2 cents worth of common sense and nickels worth of intelligence can easily understand what they are doing.
For example (and there are many) the first question was something about how “things” in Illinois are going. Surprise the vast majority said “things” were bad. No reference to education in this question. Then immediately after that question was a question about the federal government. The assumption – “things” in Illinois are bad and we all know why. The federal government is to blame and education is on the brink of destruction.
It gets worse from there.
However these people know their audience and know they will buy the spin hook line and sinker.
Here’s their goal. Energize their sheep to get to the polls. It is SO easy for them to do.
Only one thing can neutralize that. Outvote them.
If you look at the amount of money Unit 5 recieved for ESSER ($22 million for covid relief), more than half of it of it went to salaries and benefits. ($12.7 million) Why? I had Claude look at what this would amount in new hires for the district. It blended the average salaries of teachers and staff and came up with a total of 56 possible new hires. Who knows how many they actually hired but we do know they did hired more at the time. And I’m sure this pleased the unions. Was ESSER’s main purpose to expand union labor?
The real question is whether the state is scrambling for more money now because it encouraged districts to expand their staffing using temporary ESSER funds—and those federal dollars have disappeared, leaving the state holding the bag.
You nailed why only one year is on their website