Should schools pay for teachers' retirements?

One of the several points to come out of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan's speech in Elmhurst yesterday was a suggestion he might support a plan to shift the retirement costs of teachers from the state to local districts.

It's a plan that Senate President John Cullerton floated last year, and we wrote about it then.

One of the basic arguments is this: Chicago schools have to pay for their teachers' pensions. Why shouldn't suburban and downstate schools have to do the same?

It'd save the state big bucks - they paid at least $2.1 billion to the teachers' pension system last year. But local schools and the lawmakers who represent them are certain to push back. Here's part of the story from last year.

School districts wouldn’t be on the hook for that entire $2.1 billion, under the Chicago Democrat’s plan.

Cullerton said the state would continue to pay the pension debt that’s accumulated over years of skipped payments into the retirement plans. Local districts would pick up the cost of a teacher’s future pension, and the increased cost to schools could be phased in over several years.

Chicago Public Schools already pay into teachers’ pensions with relatively little help from the state, but suburban schools get help from all the state’s taxpayers, he said.

“The suburban and downstate teachers already contribute substantially to their retirements, as do the taxpayers of Illinois,” Cullerton said. “If the school boards that oversee school districts are going to effectively decide pensions by deciding salaries, then they too need to contribute substantially.”

So this could be a way for the state not to cut benefits of teachers but save money anyway. We'll see what happens in the coming months.