Some initial thoughts on the BOE budget

The MRJs Jesse Buchanan wrote this piece on last night's BOE budget meeting. And the NHR also has Luther Turmelle's piece online.

I didn't make it to last night's BOE meeting, but one cost reduction consideration for you...

While we may not know how many teachers we have, I'll ballpark the figure at 370 FTEs. And if we assume that every teacher works for the CPS until they reach the point of full retirement (37 years x 2% / year), then you'd have ten teachers retiring every year. And you can assume that a teacher at 37 years gets paid more than just about any new hire. So there's a cost reduction there. That cost reduction could be as high as $40,000/ yr ($80k to $40k), but is likely less than that in most cases.

So while the Superintendent's budget suggests a reduction of five teachers, we can assume there will be more teachers leaving... and still avoid layoffs through attrition.

Additionally, the above example assumes teachers stay for 37 years. I'm sure that's not the case. Some teachers leave after one year. And many teachers leave between one and 37 years.

My point is:

1) we're still a far way from reductions of teaching staff by means of anything other than natural attrition and

2) the cost reduction found when a retiring teacher is replaced is one of those droids we're not supposed to look for.

Tim White