D65/DEC Tentative Agreement includes 2.3% Salary Increase
Pay gap between ETHS and D65 educators continues to widen
This piece is not intended to be critical of anyone or the negotiating teams, but I am trying to point out a problem; one which is not only hypocritical1 but also an example of bad governance leading to bad outcomes.
According to documents I’ve seen - the tentative agreement between District 65 and the Teachers Union (DEC) includes a 2.3% cost-of-living increase for this year and 2.27% next year. The teachers vote on the agreement this week.
At the last board meeting where they announced the agreement, I gave a public comment. I expressed how crazy it is that two school districts (District 65 and ETHS) with exact same boundaries, relatively similar per pupil funding, and the same kids pays educators so differently. It’s hard to rattle off numbers on the podium and get them to stick.
Anyway, you can see the disparity by looking at the state’s reporting. Here’s the numbers from the Illinois School Report Card, showing that in 2023-24 there was a 21% pay gap between District 65 and ETHS.2
You may argue: ETHS has better retention and on average, more tenured staff, plus the staff get extra compensation for coaching, etc. Therefore, it makes sense that the average teacher at ETHS would make more money. Yet, we can look across all stats - including the entry level minimum salary, highest salary, and find a similar pattern.3
These are some seriously material differences! Evanston taxpayers pay a first year 8th grade science teacher $15,437 less than a similar 9th grade science teacher, for really no good reason at all. No wonder why ETHS has better teacher retention!
You can confirm these numbers in the collective bargaining agreements (D65, ETHS) or look at my compensation data I used here.
District 65 Teachers Falling Further Behind
I wrote about this a few weeks ago regarding the 5% annual tax levy that both District 65 and ETHS asked for this year. It works like this:
The Federal Government issues an inflation indicator called the CPI. This year’s CPI is 3.4%.
Taxing authorities (like ETHS or D65) ask for an annual increase in their tax levy, which is either the CPI or 5%. If they want more than that, they have to hold a referendum.
Cook County bills property taxes assessed this year, next year. So if the CPI is 3.4% this year, then they get 3.4% more money next year. Mid-year they grant teachers raises based on this CPI.
Districts functionally decide how much of their CPI increase to share with teachers and how much to use on other things. This is negotiated in the collective bargaining agreements.
When inflation is high things get messy.
Consider last year SY2023-24: the inflation CPI was 7%, the State of Illinois capped it at 5%. ETHS functionally paid 70% of their CPI increase to teachers versus D65 which shares less, 53% of their CPI increase.
The numbers for SY2024-26 (2.3% and 2.27%) for District 65 are based on the tentative agreement between the DEC and District 65. The agreement has yet to be ratified by the teachers or signed by the Board. I’ve seen copies of this document but do not having anything I can share.
The math is a little bit more complicated than I’ve written and if you’re interested in the details, you can view this spreadsheet.
Administrator Compensation
Last year, the highest paid District 65 educator made $120,861.49 in salary and pension contributions. If the tentative agreement is signed, that educator now makes around $123,641.
There are currently 29 staffers in the District 65 Central Office that earn more in compensation than the most senior educator who likely has more than 30 years of experience. I think most taxpayers are fine with executive compensation (Superintendent, CFO, etc) being higher than educators, but there are a lot of people on this list for a District heading barreling towards insolvency.
You can view the full list here. You should also read the Evanston Roundtable on some of the staffing reductions suggested by the District 65 consultant.
I’ve written about the administrative staffing costs before, you can read at this link. Let me know what you think in the comments. I personally think the long-term solution is consolidation and I’ve written op-eds on the subject. A consolidation does not need to immediately resolve the compensation issue and is not handing over the keys of ETHS to District 65. But in the end, it can optimize administrative costs and provide unified K-12 support and special education services for the kids of Evanston.
I would argue that despite all of our progressive bonafides, Evanston seems unreasonably OK with perpetuating both the gender pay gap and income inequality. We’re not the only ones doing it here, but we’re supposed to be the good guys?
Compensation here is defined as total base pay + pension benefits.
As a form of QA - note that my mean salary lines up almost perfectly with the state’s view of the mean salary. For the minimum/maximum numbers, I used the CBA tables so I didn’t include ETHS staff who make additional money coaching, etc.
To contextualize our underspending on teacher salaries, a few things really jumped out at me on their slides. The first was the accelerated deterioration of their fund balance in the "Fund Balance Projections" slide. The last two years the balance has gone down by $7.9M and this year $8.5M. Their projection for '25 is a $13.6M reduction which this plan seeks to address with $13.2M in proposed savings, mostly by taking a hatchet to our teachers. Most alarming, however, are the projected losses of $19M in FY26, $24M om FY27 and $28M in FY28. And we know these guys always manage to misspend more than they project by about $10M/yr. To make matters worse, the bottom of the slide notes, "Represents all funds EXCEPT Debt Service and Capital Projects". That is, this is before counting the impact of Foster School Spending, which I would submit is being greatly underestimated. If they consistently miss their budget targets by $10M on school operations, an area they theoretically should be experts in, what's going to happen with construction overruns? This is known area of risk even for firms with deep expertise which D65, by their own admission, is not:
https://solvepmproblems.com/change-order-best-practices-what-contractors-clients-need-to-know/
My guess is the annual burn on the Foster school will be at least $5M, not the $3.2M they're projecting. This basically is a 50% adder to their current annual deficit rate. The notion that the Foster school construction can't be stopped is effectively saying we can't save the projected $50M (at today's forecast) because we already spent $3M. Huh, seems like a pretty easy $50M savings for a District that's already $288M in the whole in debt and deferred maintenance. Simply put, they're going to balance this on the backs of the teachers, students and an inevitable referendum, ahem, that's the rest of us. I wonder how much of a pay raise Administration will treat themselves to for all this?
What district needs all of those administrators? I can't even begin to guess what all of those folks do. Start cutting at the top, don't even consider the cuts on the backs of our teachers. When I taught in D65 I was floored to learned how much more D202 teachers were paid and coming from a different state, I was totally baffled why one town had two districts. Here's yet another sad story of how D65 wastes money...last school year, 2023-24, a teacher I know was granted a sabbatical to live/study in another country while getting paid by the district; then upon return was riffed! None of the great knowledge learned while away was used in the district. We paid the teacher an entire year's salary to live/learn in another country and got nothing in return. I would bet there are more stories like this one out there, so we shouldn't be too surprised we are were we are today. What a joke and the teachers are getting a measly raise while top admin are sitting pretty. When will this madness end.