STEP 1: Jim Reed, IEA government relations director, walks you through the steps of submitting comments to the governor’s budget website about how the state’s budget crisis is affecting your district. STEP 2: Click this link to give the governor your input. FOR GOV. QUINN TO SEE YOUR COMMENT YOU MUST POST IT ON THE GOVERNOR’S WEBSITE.
Formats available: MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)
Illinois Education Association is an association of more than 130,000 members composed of Illinois elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty and staff, educational support professionals, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers.
Quality education will be hurt by education and pension benefit cuts. Inability to draw quality educators to the profession either by professional standard compensation reduction and pension security reduction will be fatal to our democracy.
Please remember that the education of children, along with health care, must be one of the most important priorities we have. They are our future. When we skimp on providing them the richest and best educational services we can, we put the whole nation at risk. It is these children who will be our legislators, politicians, scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs. They must take over the functions that make our nation what it is. It will be up to them to figure out how to solve problems of the environment, energy, pollution, the deficit, foreign relations, medical research. Who knows which neighborhood they will come from, which suburb, which family? Who cares. Each one is a precious resource which we must not waste.
Applying RIF in the Education System it will be in the long run devastated for the State of Illinois. US depend on an excellent education for the future; President Obama did, this is how he became president so Governor Pat Quinn and he is now Governor of Illinois. The challenges to give an excellent education to students nowadays is harder for a lot of reasons that didn’t exist in the past and it will be harder if the RIF will be apply to the Educational System. Give a good thought to the future of our country; it’s in your hands.
I am a retired elementary teacher and rely on my pension to make ends meet. We need to correct the imbalance in the state pension. I think you should raise Il income taxes to 4.5% like ou suggested earlier. We have the lowest income taxes of almost all states in the US . We cannot continue to dip into our pension funds to pay for the state’s other expenses. We are rated as being the worst shape as indicated in both a Wall Street Journal and Forbes article. Let’s get this thing turned around.
I am an educational interpreter for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students. With budget cuts our students may go without quality support services. This will impact our students access for an equal education with their peers. These students need our support and we must provide them equal footing in our society.
I am a retired teacher who taught 34 years in Illinois. I have seen what cuts in state education funding can do to small and large districts. Students suffer from having lost classes and activities. Therefore, it is important that any new state budget has provisions for INCREASING not decreasing funds for all districts in Illinois. Also, it is imperative to preserve the status of our teachers retirement pension system and not use it as a bargaining tool.
Too many times; whether we are Educators, Politicians, Rich or Poor, Red, Yellow, Black, or White, as the Adults of America we have failed our most precious resource as a country and I am very embarrassed when I have to admit that to myself, much less a child. When are we going to stand up and admit that we have to take care of our nation’s children before we take care of our rich companies? Shame on you and all of the times you have told a child you cared about them! And shame on all of us for believing that Politicians everywhere care about the education of America’s children. We can’t challenge a nation without the necessary “current” resources and textbooks to teach, much less pencils to use and notebook paper to write on that many educators are purchasing themselves for students. There are no workbooks to copy unless the educators purchases them. Thank you for making us stretch our massive paychecks even farther to educate the children American Politicians Left Behind with Budgetary cuts.
Dear Governor Quinn,
I am writing to you as a member of the Illinois Education Association and as a concerned, tax paying citizen of Illinois. Please support education and continue to fund education at the current standard. I believe that the personal expense of cutbacks in education will outweigh any short term benefits.
I hear rumors that 11 schools in the Chicago area will be closed. Where will those students go? I also heard that 17,000 teachers could be out of a job. I can hardly imagine how our American ethic of free education for all will survive in such conditions.
Of course I have a personal agenda to express because I am a teacher, but I am also a tax payer and a parent. I would support a tax increase even though it is not a popular remedy, especially to you as you run for the position of governor. Please do the right thing and be honest with the people in the state of Illinois. We, as a state, need to pay more to keep education at the current standard.
I understand the need for the State to make cuts, but frankly they have literally done that in the past by not placing the amount that the State has agreed to put in the pension fund.
I believe that there are about 30 thousand retired educators in Illinois who paid into the pension system directly from their salaries with the understanding that we would get the pension that we are now getting.
The State should consider very carefully any changes that they make as it impacts thousands of teachers who are paying into the pension and are told what the benefits will be. To change this is very unfair and a reason for some to leave education and take jobs in other fields. And what would be lost would be the most talented individuals in our field.
Also, do not attempt to take funds that the teachers have paid into the system for any reason. It is their personal money and not the States that is being inversted.
The states role should be to protect our assets and allow funds to be created through investments made by our organization.
My feeling is that it is not fair that Eduacators, and all staff that work for the School District get RIF. It has been said that yearly raises have brought the education fund down, but that is budgeted for every year. It is not fair that School Districts are suffering because the State refuses to pay. THAT STINKS !! The moneys have to be there but when you start robbing Peter to pay Paul then you just get yourself in more trouble. SHAME on our Goverment elected officals for letting this continue to happen. My thinking is that if the President of the United States can bail out financial institues then money should be made available to bail out the Schools. Children need a GOOD EDUCATION and a FAIR CHANCE in life to get that education in our SCHOOLS. PLEASE consider not cutting anymore from the education field and send the MONEY needed to keep Teachers and others in the education field working.
Thank you,
Linda K. Helm
First of all you wouldn’t be reading this message from the Governor’s Office chair if it weren’t for the topnotch teachers you had who helped you get there, nor would I have had a 36 year teaching career without mine. As we had opportunities for a great education, so do our children. Please keep this in mind and don’t put them at a severe disadvantage in this world. I think as a nation we want more self-sufficient individuals, and more successful loving families, not indigents who are unemployed and living in cardboard boxes on the streets. What you do now will impact all those future possibilities.
Second, the children’s quality education will not be possible with cuts to books, materials, current technology, and most of all top-notch professional and support staff to accomplish the teaching, tutoring and mentoring of these students. It is a known fact that schools today must provide much more for children than what is learned from a book, as we are “life skills” teachers now.
Please keep these things in mind when you consider cutting the budget for education. Perhaps if you again try for the income tax increase, you can keep from touching education funds.
Last, but certainly not least, as a retired educator I don’t want to think about mishandling of pension funds so that I can be rewarded for spending 36 years/12-18 hours on most days, worrying whether I will be on the welfare rolls. Before touching pension funds, you need to consider this and the fact that the funds that I paid in every year reduced my meager salary so that one day I could retire and have some quality to my life. Unfortunately, this is not true of older teachers who retired before me and our retired teacher organizations, particularly MCRT II, funds these teachers so they can at least eat. Teachers that are now teaching deserve to know that their years of dedication have not been in vane. Please drop the two-tier pension idea and give them a chance at a decent future.
I understand that the economy is in crisis. But education cuts are not the answer. I support House Bill #174 to increase the income tax. Education effects us NOW and our FUTURE. As a teacher and parent we cannot have a functioning society without educating eveeryone. It is sad that our superintendents and administrative people receive a bigger salary and increases than the people in the trenches. Lets stop and think of our children first.
I find the economy crisis a situation that has taken years to create. It will take years to restore our economy. The education system of our state will attract new business or we will watch more businesses leave by the way we treat the future(Jobs)of our state. The cuts to education provide limited or no opportunities to the youth of our state for education, jobs, higher education, and a reason to work in our state to help make it strong again.
I would like to suggest that we use some of the states resources to promote our state to other places as a place for business (Do we do anything that helps business survive?), for tourist, for investment in historical activities, etc. The idea being to attract people to our state to spend money that would bring in taxes, etc. I think that we need to try to think of ways to improve our economy.
The school that I teach in will also watch every penny they spend as they recieve less money from the state. The end result will be larger classes, fewer opporutnities to stay on top of the best education practices, fewer teachers, more jobless, and our community will find a decline as fewer people will want their child in a state that does not value education. I have read in many papers that the lack of degrees is the reason that we are having trouble atracting business.
The pension is not the reason the state is in trouble. What has happen is the result of not honoring a comittment for years. If you were a young teacher and you knew what Illnois wants to do to the teacher pension, would you even consider teaching here? My goal for the many years that I have taught at the school I’ve been at was to make it a good place for “Children to aacquire the joy of learning” so they would want to continue to learn though out their life. That has required a lot of skill, classes, and time beyond the school day. I also have paid into the Teacher Retirement System. I strongly believe that you need to turn your attention to a different state problem than to blame the pension. It is not the solution to the problem. What future will this state have if you devalue education?
Thank you for reading my comments.
Linda Duncan
Please consider fully funding of the pension system. I paid into the pension fund for 33 1/2 years. I have made cuts in heating expenses, grocery bills, church, and charity. The state must figure out a way to pay the schools what is owed to them. Drastic cuts will have a negative impact on teachers and students. Please drop the idea of the two-tier pension system. We need to attract the best teachers for our children to have a fair chance of getting a good education and a job in the future. Thank you for reading my comments.
Teaching was once a honorable profession but now we are ridiculed about the number of years and hours that we work, NO ONE ever talks about the papers we grade, the lesson plans we write, the research we do to keep our subject matter current, we only hear that we work short hour. Finance were is the lottery money were is the casino money why are we asked to take cuts teach larger classes and tecah children that we have not been taught to teach special education, can you answer any of the why’s? WHAT WOULD YOUR LIFE BE LIKE IF YOU DID NOT HAVE A GOOD EDUCATION
I am writing to you as a member of the Illinois Education Association and as a concerned, tax paying citizen of Illinois. Please support education and continue to fund education at the current standard.
Why do live in a society where we are willing to value (and pay) our Professional athletes, actors, actresses, etc. far more than the value of a teacher? Doesn’t it all start from a strong ad solid education? If you cant offer teachers a solid pension and a decent salary, what are you going to offer them? Please do not consider the Two Tier Pension plan.