Breaking: Action in the Illinois House on teacher pensions.
Three pension amendments to HB 1154 were debated on the House floor this afternoon. Floor amendment #7 passed 65-7. Amendments 6 and 8 failed.
The amendments to House Bill 1154 included the following:
The amendments to House Bill 1154 included the following:
- Limits/freezes pensionable salary of TRS employees to the greater of the Social Security base for the previous year (currently $113,700), or the annual salary of the member in the previous year – does not apply to salaries determined by contracts or collective bargaining agreements currently in place on the effective date of the bill.Amendment passed 65-7.
- Increases employee contributions 4% over two years - Amendment failed 11-58-2.
- Suspends/eliminates COLA for all Tier I employees and retirees (anyone hired before 1/1/2011) from the bill’s effective date through January 2024. Amendment failed 2-67.
119 of the 129 CPS schools on the closing list are in Black communities.
An analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times shows that 88%, 119 of the 129 schools that are on the list for possible“The racial breakdown of the schools that are eligible to be closed is really an indictment on the fact that the district has operated without accountability in a two-tiered education system.
“What we should be saying instead of blaming parents, instead of blaming teachers or having low expectations, is, ‘Why can the school district set up excellent public schools on one side of town because it wants to keep that demographic there but starve out neighborhood schools in another community that’s African-American, and after the district neglects those schools, say ‘Look your schools are under-utilized, your test scores aren’t where they should be.”
- Jitu Brown, Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization
School closings have consequences.
