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:
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?
Yeah those numbers were shocking to even me. Like, suppose they find a way to not lose $13.6m this year (we're already halfway through the year??) through some miracle. You're still staring down another -$6 million next year and then another -$6 million the year after on top of that. They have until mid-January to get a referendum on the ballot and it almost seems like they *have* to at this point? Like - it's a hail mary but looking at their "fund balance" slide - it sure seems like they will be literally out of money by mid fiscal year 2026.
They can’t balance this on the backs of the rest of us if we vote and vote no. Why would you willingly give money to a district who proves they can’t spend it wisely?
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.
There was a quote in the Roundtable from one of the board members about how valuable every employee is - regardless of how far they removed they are from students. As a recently retired teacher: No. No, many of the highly-paid staff at JEH are NOT valuable. They've already begun cutting resources for teachers this year, making differentiation much more difficult for teachers, esp. SPED teachers. Families want high-quality teachers and teacher retention? It's only going to get worse.
Biz is full of shit. She went out of her way to make that remark because she is trying to mitigate the criticism that will most deservedly come her (and the Board’s) way because this ostentatious display of JEH salary sits squarely at her feet. They hired the con man in secret. They paved the way with gold bricks for him to do whatever he wanted and hire whomever he wanted. We are stuck with the current super because he hired her (when CPS won’t?!?!) and she returns the nepotism favor by hiring her sister! When exactly WILL this madness end? This is a tale that if you switched the names to Trump and his kids and changed a few details, it would all ring very true. That’s why I am constantly flummoxed as to why it is happening here. Let me be clear: NOT ALL District employees are valuable. And I know of several current volunteers who are for sure not, too!
And let's not forget that before Biz was a consultant, she was....an administrator. At NU's Women's Center. So, not super surprising that she perceives great value in the layer of admin folks residing at the JEH. As someone who formerly worked as an administrator at NU myself, I can attest that while we certainly made some useful contributions, our impact on the students' education didn't come anywhere close to that of the professors in the classroom.
Do we have any sense for how this list of jobs (and salaries) compares to neighboring districts that are of about the same size? It would be interesting/useful to find a district that isn't in distress (which is about the same size) use their admin structures as a blueprint.
I don't have an answer to this but the data is available. We should determine what comp districts to Evanston are: similar size of enrollment, per cap funding, % free lunch and % special ed students. Trying to think off my head - maybe Oak Park or Forest Park? Both of those have similar problems to D65 right now, though..
Every day a teacher walks into her/his classroom and does the most most important job. It’s him/ her in front of 25 to 30 students. And every year more administrators and consultants are hired at ridiculous salaries. They are all able to sit at their computers or at meetings with time for lunch, coffee breaks , personal phone calls, scrolling on their phone etc etc. Life is pretty good for them. They couldn’t identify a student if they ran across one. They actually couldn’t identify a teacher if they ran into one. They are isolated in an admissions building. This is the reality as I see it as a school social worker of twenty years
Thanks for pointing this out, Tom. As a retired D65 school librarian, this is something I always felt we should be fighting for as union members; a pay scale that meets ETHS AND also becoming a single district school system. Unfortunately, we have some problems being two districts; the blame game, the lack of articulation between middle school and high school, and honing in on what makes sense on curricular needs and investments. Several years ago there was an NU study done about costs becoming a single district - it basically was cost neutral (not sure that addressed salaries, but the salary shift could happen over time). This would not only be better for teachers and staff, but students and their families. Illinois has the most school districts in the country and it's costing us all more money.
I ran some numbers a while ago - I think the cost is somewhere around $20 million to get the salaries leveled out. It made no sense in the past when the administration was much smaller but now that administrative/operational costs are so much higher, the numbers are closer to working.
I was looking over the admin spreadsheet. Can you explain what the "Chief Communications Officer" does? ETHS doesn't have anyone with that title. They have a coms person who makes half of Messigner's salary. The Roundtable reported that last night's community meeting at Chute on the budget deficit that Turner showed up and played a video. Is that what the Chief Communications Officer is doing?
Is she the one spamming me with texts and emails from Joey and Omar about peace in the Middle East?
And then what is this "Director of Special Projects"?
What does the "Deputy Superintendent" do? ETHS just has a Superintendent and then Assistant Superintendents. They have no "Deputy Superintendent."
It would be really interesting to see a pre- and post-Horton comparison of just the admin titles.
They did a round of "re-imagining" at the end of last year and did terminate some positions (like CREATE65) but back-filled a lot of other ones and expanded some teams in admin.
After yet another absolutely pathetic performance by the Board last night, I feel that the nightmare is just beginning. All I heard was a Board that is begging to let the clock run out on their terms without having to make a decision on cuts. I was surprised to hear the consultant bring up the prospect of closing schools after THIS year which also seemed to surprise some Board members. Can someone explain why Dr. Grossi seems to have been ghosted?
Just from a sheer political standpoint, I think they have to kick the can. Otherwise, it's like make all the decisions that will be like half done for the next board, which seems like an even bigger mess.
Given how bad the finances are, I would think they have to close something this year, if for no reason than to ease the budget pressure, which is only going to get worse especially with the big check they will need to write for things inside foster school.
Instead of buying new things for inside the Foster School, what they should do is move literally everything (chairs, desks, tables, equipment, etc.) from Bessie Rhodes to the new school over the summer. Then they’ll have it fully furnished at no additional burden to the budget. Just because it’s a new building doesn’t mean they need new stuff inside it.
I was curious about the building closures being brought up when the people they hired were the only group that wanted to put almost the entire burden on staff. I specifically remember the woman saying that building closures should be put on hold when they were invited back after not bidding in the first round.
I think he was publicly declaring the fact there was no way they could afford their new school. They even tried to hide his last report. Tom and Duncan had to FOIA it out of them, as I recall. I don’t think we’ll be hearing from him or his financially prudent advice any longer.
To be perfectly frank, and I often am, every single board member today should leave. Whether because their term is over or due to resignation. That way their seats can all be filled via the upcoming election en masse. Maybe Omar could stay, but truthfully, I haven’t heard any righteous anger from him toward his colleagues- and he has every right to shout it loud from the JEH rooftop. I thought he would be a leading voice of reason. So maybe he should go, too. It’s not like this should be anything he would want to put on his resume, anyway. Dismal failure.
When I first heard about these numbers, I was shocked that the teachers had been working without a contract for so long only to agree to such a raw deal.
Compare to CPS/CTU on the same contract cycle - CPS stated they are offering 5% raises, CTU's bargaining position was for 9% to make up for the under-inflation raises the last few years.
It seems DEC is willing to balance the budget on the backs of teachers.
Well, I think there may be other priorities in play too, such as protecting jobs in the upcoming deficit reduction plan. Complicated and ultimately the blame falls on the people of Evanston and the Board for letting it get this bad. I think the DEC is working with the hand they were dealt, which this year, is not the best
Please note that it was DEC LEADERSHIP that did the endorsements and that group was subsequently voted out by the rank and file. I taught in D65 for over 30 years and was never asked for any input into candidate endorsements.
Here is a ‘memory lane’ nugget that I don’t remember at all.
Suni Kartha, who was board president when Horton was hired (and who lied to the community in 2019 when she said Horton requested anonymity to be in the Evanston search while he was participating in public searches at other districts) got a challenger kicked off the ballot in 2019.
This paved the way for Tanyavutti, Sergio, and Mendoza to have no challengers.
She filed a similar BS objection to Neal saying the candidate failed to number his petitions correctly.
The first point raised by Ms. Kartha’s objections is that Section 10-4 of the Election Code says that the Petition for Nomination sheets that are filed must be fastened together “and the sheets shall then be numbered consecutively.” The objections state that Mr. Korzeniowski submitted eight Petition for Nomination sheets “and only two of them are numbered. Those sheets are numbered ‘2’ and ‘1’ which are not consecutive numbers.”
She likely violated both Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics required for IL School Board members in doing so. Don't know much about the candidate she got tossed, but it doesn't really matter - it's shady to literally give the electorate no choice when they already had little of it to begin with.
He was on her campaign payroll last year according to her campaign committee disclosures.
Another nugget is that current candidate Nichole Pinkard was one of Mya’s campaign funders last year. Nichole is also the only new D65 candidate who has established a fundraising committee this far.It will be interesting to see if any of her expenditures go to Neal….
Thank you for sharing this. We as a community need to be informed about candidates who are affiliated with people on the board so we can vote wisely and elect people who represent the change we need.
That is a very helpful info nugget, as those candidates of the ultra-Progressive ideologue cadre aligned with the current board need to be identified, as they will likely hide under the usual vague and bland platitudes until actually elected.
Yes, Pinkard will be old guard. I would add Andrew Wymer to that list as well. He is a theology professor at Garrett Seminary. If you look at his academic writing it screams Biz 2.0.
Not sure beyond the photo on Neal’s Digital4Dems firm website promoting Mya as one of his clientele. Payback need only be referrals and more future business from Mya’s Progressive board cadre.
Not to get too into the weeds, but do you know if that 2.3% includes step or is in addition to step? The 23/24 salary schedule lists the pay increase as "1.5% Base Increase Plus Step." If the proposed increases are structured the same way, the increase would be significantly higher than just 2.3%...which I feel they completely deserve.
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?
Yeah those numbers were shocking to even me. Like, suppose they find a way to not lose $13.6m this year (we're already halfway through the year??) through some miracle. You're still staring down another -$6 million next year and then another -$6 million the year after on top of that. They have until mid-January to get a referendum on the ballot and it almost seems like they *have* to at this point? Like - it's a hail mary but looking at their "fund balance" slide - it sure seems like they will be literally out of money by mid fiscal year 2026.
They can’t balance this on the backs of the rest of us if we vote and vote no. Why would you willingly give money to a district who proves they can’t spend it wisely?
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.
There was a quote in the Roundtable from one of the board members about how valuable every employee is - regardless of how far they removed they are from students. As a recently retired teacher: No. No, many of the highly-paid staff at JEH are NOT valuable. They've already begun cutting resources for teachers this year, making differentiation much more difficult for teachers, esp. SPED teachers. Families want high-quality teachers and teacher retention? It's only going to get worse.
Biz is full of shit. She went out of her way to make that remark because she is trying to mitigate the criticism that will most deservedly come her (and the Board’s) way because this ostentatious display of JEH salary sits squarely at her feet. They hired the con man in secret. They paved the way with gold bricks for him to do whatever he wanted and hire whomever he wanted. We are stuck with the current super because he hired her (when CPS won’t?!?!) and she returns the nepotism favor by hiring her sister! When exactly WILL this madness end? This is a tale that if you switched the names to Trump and his kids and changed a few details, it would all ring very true. That’s why I am constantly flummoxed as to why it is happening here. Let me be clear: NOT ALL District employees are valuable. And I know of several current volunteers who are for sure not, too!
I was at the school board meeting last night, and that was Biz that made that remark. It was infuriating then. And it still is now.
And let's not forget that before Biz was a consultant, she was....an administrator. At NU's Women's Center. So, not super surprising that she perceives great value in the layer of admin folks residing at the JEH. As someone who formerly worked as an administrator at NU myself, I can attest that while we certainly made some useful contributions, our impact on the students' education didn't come anywhere close to that of the professors in the classroom.
Do we have any sense for how this list of jobs (and salaries) compares to neighboring districts that are of about the same size? It would be interesting/useful to find a district that isn't in distress (which is about the same size) use their admin structures as a blueprint.
I don't have an answer to this but the data is available. We should determine what comp districts to Evanston are: similar size of enrollment, per cap funding, % free lunch and % special ed students. Trying to think off my head - maybe Oak Park or Forest Park? Both of those have similar problems to D65 right now, though..
Every day a teacher walks into her/his classroom and does the most most important job. It’s him/ her in front of 25 to 30 students. And every year more administrators and consultants are hired at ridiculous salaries. They are all able to sit at their computers or at meetings with time for lunch, coffee breaks , personal phone calls, scrolling on their phone etc etc. Life is pretty good for them. They couldn’t identify a student if they ran across one. They actually couldn’t identify a teacher if they ran into one. They are isolated in an admissions building. This is the reality as I see it as a school social worker of twenty years
Seeing an admin from JEH in a school building is like seeing a UFO.
Thanks for pointing this out, Tom. As a retired D65 school librarian, this is something I always felt we should be fighting for as union members; a pay scale that meets ETHS AND also becoming a single district school system. Unfortunately, we have some problems being two districts; the blame game, the lack of articulation between middle school and high school, and honing in on what makes sense on curricular needs and investments. Several years ago there was an NU study done about costs becoming a single district - it basically was cost neutral (not sure that addressed salaries, but the salary shift could happen over time). This would not only be better for teachers and staff, but students and their families. Illinois has the most school districts in the country and it's costing us all more money.
I ran some numbers a while ago - I think the cost is somewhere around $20 million to get the salaries leveled out. It made no sense in the past when the administration was much smaller but now that administrative/operational costs are so much higher, the numbers are closer to working.
Hope to see these questions floated to the District 65 Board candidates.
I was looking over the admin spreadsheet. Can you explain what the "Chief Communications Officer" does? ETHS doesn't have anyone with that title. They have a coms person who makes half of Messigner's salary. The Roundtable reported that last night's community meeting at Chute on the budget deficit that Turner showed up and played a video. Is that what the Chief Communications Officer is doing?
Is she the one spamming me with texts and emails from Joey and Omar about peace in the Middle East?
And then what is this "Director of Special Projects"?
What does the "Deputy Superintendent" do? ETHS just has a Superintendent and then Assistant Superintendents. They have no "Deputy Superintendent."
It would be really interesting to see a pre- and post-Horton comparison of just the admin titles.
RE: Communications. She has to deal with me 😂 in which case she is probably underpaid!!
Special Projects is the guy dealing with all the Foster School stuff. He's at like every board meeting talking about SAP and Foster School.
As for the tiers of Superintendents, I have no idea.
They do nothing. They make over $170k and they don’t even show up to work!!!
"It would be really interesting to see a pre- and post-Horton comparison of just the admin titles."
I really would like to see that list as well.
It's all on here, just look at the tabs at the bottom
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rq3D8kB0w9AECf4bwFutO8YJr1msOLINYh36azMGGO8/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=117686784304462112161
Thanks for sharing the link. So if my maths are right (debatable!) there was a 104% increase in administrative staff from 2023 to 2024. Wild.
They did a round of "re-imagining" at the end of last year and did terminate some positions (like CREATE65) but back-filled a lot of other ones and expanded some teams in admin.
Horton’s jobs-for-friends program…
After yet another absolutely pathetic performance by the Board last night, I feel that the nightmare is just beginning. All I heard was a Board that is begging to let the clock run out on their terms without having to make a decision on cuts. I was surprised to hear the consultant bring up the prospect of closing schools after THIS year which also seemed to surprise some Board members. Can someone explain why Dr. Grossi seems to have been ghosted?
Just from a sheer political standpoint, I think they have to kick the can. Otherwise, it's like make all the decisions that will be like half done for the next board, which seems like an even bigger mess.
Given how bad the finances are, I would think they have to close something this year, if for no reason than to ease the budget pressure, which is only going to get worse especially with the big check they will need to write for things inside foster school.
Instead of buying new things for inside the Foster School, what they should do is move literally everything (chairs, desks, tables, equipment, etc.) from Bessie Rhodes to the new school over the summer. Then they’ll have it fully furnished at no additional burden to the budget. Just because it’s a new building doesn’t mean they need new stuff inside it.
I think they said thats the plan at the meeting yesterday
I’m glad to hear that. I haven’t seen the meeting.
I was curious about the building closures being brought up when the people they hired were the only group that wanted to put almost the entire burden on staff. I specifically remember the woman saying that building closures should be put on hold when they were invited back after not bidding in the first round.
I think he was publicly declaring the fact there was no way they could afford their new school. They even tried to hide his last report. Tom and Duncan had to FOIA it out of them, as I recall. I don’t think we’ll be hearing from him or his financially prudent advice any longer.
It's so telling that they have ghosted Dr. Grossi. He is making smart financial recommendations so they have pushed him out. Insane.
To be perfectly frank, and I often am, every single board member today should leave. Whether because their term is over or due to resignation. That way their seats can all be filled via the upcoming election en masse. Maybe Omar could stay, but truthfully, I haven’t heard any righteous anger from him toward his colleagues- and he has every right to shout it loud from the JEH rooftop. I thought he would be a leading voice of reason. So maybe he should go, too. It’s not like this should be anything he would want to put on his resume, anyway. Dismal failure.
When I first heard about these numbers, I was shocked that the teachers had been working without a contract for so long only to agree to such a raw deal.
Compare to CPS/CTU on the same contract cycle - CPS stated they are offering 5% raises, CTU's bargaining position was for 9% to make up for the under-inflation raises the last few years.
It seems DEC is willing to balance the budget on the backs of teachers.
Well, I think there may be other priorities in play too, such as protecting jobs in the upcoming deficit reduction plan. Complicated and ultimately the blame falls on the people of Evanston and the Board for letting it get this bad. I think the DEC is working with the hand they were dealt, which this year, is not the best
Also, the DEC helped forge that hand by failing to critique obvious mismanagement and endorsing the entire board that got us into this mess.
Please note that it was DEC LEADERSHIP that did the endorsements and that group was subsequently voted out by the rank and file. I taught in D65 for over 30 years and was never asked for any input into candidate endorsements.
It seems like board candidate endorsements of a union should be based on survey votes of its members. Wishful thinking.
Here is a ‘memory lane’ nugget that I don’t remember at all.
Suni Kartha, who was board president when Horton was hired (and who lied to the community in 2019 when she said Horton requested anonymity to be in the Evanston search while he was participating in public searches at other districts) got a challenger kicked off the ballot in 2019.
This paved the way for Tanyavutti, Sergio, and Mendoza to have no challengers.
She filed a similar BS objection to Neal saying the candidate failed to number his petitions correctly.
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2019/01/09/hearing-officer-recommends-that-nicholas-korzeniowski-not-appear-on-the-ballot-for-district-65-school-board/
Oh my god, it's so much worse
The first point raised by Ms. Kartha’s objections is that Section 10-4 of the Election Code says that the Petition for Nomination sheets that are filed must be fastened together “and the sheets shall then be numbered consecutively.” The objections state that Mr. Korzeniowski submitted eight Petition for Nomination sheets “and only two of them are numbered. Those sheets are numbered ‘2’ and ‘1’ which are not consecutive numbers.”
She likely violated both Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics required for IL School Board members in doing so. Don't know much about the candidate she got tossed, but it doesn't really matter - it's shady to literally give the electorate no choice when they already had little of it to begin with.
Off topic, but Neil Weingarten misspelled Anita Opdycke’s name on his cynical effort to dump her off the ballot, which may wind up keeping her on.
What a joke.
https://evanstonnow.com/spelling-error-might-salvage-d65-candidacy/
Aha! I love this - using pedantic rules to fight pedantic rules is exactly the kind of thing we need around here!
Has anyone asked current Board member Wilkins about her connection to Weingarden?
He was on her campaign payroll last year according to her campaign committee disclosures.
Another nugget is that current candidate Nichole Pinkard was one of Mya’s campaign funders last year. Nichole is also the only new D65 candidate who has established a fundraising committee this far.It will be interesting to see if any of her expenditures go to Neal….
https://www.elections.il.gov/Campaigndisclosure/CDPDFViewer.aspx?FiledDocID=GGN0aPcgGkFAC8iTNufhlQ%3d%3d&DocType=y4%2bQAKnRNtkuIDOSztTByg%3d%3d
Thank you for sharing this. We as a community need to be informed about candidates who are affiliated with people on the board so we can vote wisely and elect people who represent the change we need.
That is a very helpful info nugget, as those candidates of the ultra-Progressive ideologue cadre aligned with the current board need to be identified, as they will likely hide under the usual vague and bland platitudes until actually elected.
Yes, Pinkard will be old guard. I would add Andrew Wymer to that list as well. He is a theology professor at Garrett Seminary. If you look at his academic writing it screams Biz 2.0.
Hard pass on him and Pinkard.
Not sure beyond the photo on Neal’s Digital4Dems firm website promoting Mya as one of his clientele. Payback need only be referrals and more future business from Mya’s Progressive board cadre.
Not to get too into the weeds, but do you know if that 2.3% includes step or is in addition to step? The 23/24 salary schedule lists the pay increase as "1.5% Base Increase Plus Step." If the proposed increases are structured the same way, the increase would be significantly higher than just 2.3%...which I feel they completely deserve.
Plus step is higher, stay tuned I had a lot of people explain this to me in the last day