Evanston's Thea Halvorson Sheds TV Crocodile Tears Over Fat Teachers Pensions

Thea Halvorson is a kindergarten teacher at Evanston's Kingsley Elementary School who pulls down almost $100k a year. She has been appearing lately on the airwaves shedding crocodile tears over the meager $60k plus pension with annual 3% increases that she will haul down when she retires in June.

Halvorson, who is on a coffee klatsch basis with the powerful IEA's chief union honcho, Audrey Soglin, appears in the TV version of the "We Are One Illinois" ads currently saturating the Chicago media market. The ads are a joint venture of the IEA, Illinois Federation of Teachers, the AFSCME and the AFL-CIO.

IEA Union Boss Soglin

They purport to "tell important truths" about pensions for government workers, but really put forth more than a few stretchers and outright whoppers.

Put aside the question of whether or not a glorified public school daycare worker should be hauling down almost twice the salary of a Navy Seal (like the ones who just took down Osama) and consider that almost half of working Americans have no pension plans or IRA's whatsoever.

Consider that the average retiree on Social Security will subsist on less than $14k a year.

One might reasonably think Ms. Halvorson and her government union pals a trifle dissembling to pass themselves off as aggrieved, impoverished, exploited workers who are soon to be subsisting on cans of dog food.

Especially so, considering that a government teacher of Halvorson's pay grade with 34 years service will haul down $68,523 per year for starters. (Halvorson has only 20 years, so it will be marginally less.) And union contracts will increase that by 3% a year until the Kingsley kindergarten teacher passes on to that great union hall in the sky.

Assuming Halvorson is 60 and lives to 89, by the time of that unhappy event, she will have enjoyed $3,260,035 in taxpayer financed retirement pay.

Not a bad little retirement nest egg.

Here is the pension calculation based on Halvorson's last 4 years of salary:

Pension Calculator
Retirement Age: 60

Salary Last year of Employment $96070
Salary 2nd Last year of Employment $92949
Salary 3rd Last year of Employment $88820
Salary 4th Last year of Employment $87617
LAST FOUR YEARS TOTAL $365456
Divided by 4 $91364
Times 75%:  $68,523 initial annual pension

Annual increase percent 3.00% per year.

I've noticed that in one of the IEA's new radio ads, they have an elderly sounding man whose voice cracks up sorrowfully when he describes his woeful plight as a government pensioner.

It brings a little tear to my eye every time.

IL Teacher, Big Labor Mouthpiece Annice Brave Mounts New Media Blitz (She's Baaack!!)

Big news on the Chicago public education front this week.

First, the Better Government Association (BGA)revealed that 14 Chicago Public School special education teachers went on an all-expense paid trip to a Las Vegas resort and spa for a conference last year. They did this on "report card day" thereby missing what one teacher called "the biggest night for teachers to talk with parents."

The BGA also reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasteful spending by Chicago School Board members including tax dollars spent on champagne costing $125 a bottle; thousands more on limousines, steak lunches and a food and liquor bill from a Soldier Field skybox event that alone cost more than $6,000.

This while the Chicago public school system labors under a $700 million budget shortfall.


While all this was coming out, Big-Labor's favorite school marm, Annice Brave, was back on the Chicago airwaves in a concentrated blitz of paid Teacher's Union ads.

They are feel-good ads designed to assure us that the disinterested, self-sacrificing members of the state's most powerful special interest lobby, are really just concerned with the well being of all the kiddies.

In the 30 second Illinois Education Association (IEA) spots, Ms. Brave cackles that teaching is "not just a job for anyone." She then spouts the standard Education unionist claptrap that "Americans are counting on us to build a great educational system," and that we "need to get teachers to the table if we want real education reform."

Brave, who pulls down almost twice the annual salary of the average family in her economically depressed Alton, Illinois district, was last omnipresent on the Chicago airwaves during the second week of January. Back then, the IEA shelled out $81k a week to put her on the air with a similar sales pitch.

The last media blitz was timed to precede the state legislative vote to hike the Illinois personal income tax.

This one is apparently timed to coincide with the further legislative deliberations on tax and fee hikes, signalled by IL House Speaker, Mike Madigan.

The educational establishment with its wildly extravagant teachers' salaries and pensions, of course, has an interest in increasing the tax burden in a state that is, for all practical purposes, broke.

Annice Brave is right. "Teaching isn't just a job for anyone."

It's a job for high-living, Vegas high-rollers.

IL Teachers Union Blitzes Chgo. Airwaves Before Tax Hike Vote

"When schoolchildren are allowed to vote, then I'll begin looking after the interests of schoolchildren. Until then, I'm representing the interests of my membership." Albert Shanker, President, American Federation of Teachers

You couldn't listen to Chicago radio last week without hearing Annice Brave. She is the small-town schoolmarmish sounding woman who was shilling for the powerful IEA teachers' union. She was everywhere up and down the dial, every fifteen minutes or so on some stations.

She was propounding the IEA's line that they're only about improving the quality of education for the children. The IEA, according to informed industry sources, dropped $81k in radio buys for this message last week in the Chicago market alone.

This, of course, was timed by the media sharpies in the IEA's propaganda bureau to precede the state legislature's vote to massively increase personal and corporate taxes.

Listen to a recording of the ad here.

The wide dispersal of that feel good message was undoubtedly prompted, in no small part, by a recent Rasmussen poll which showed that taxpayers are getting fed up with the bloated salaries and pensions of government employees, including teachers.

According to Jack Roeser, the founder of the Family Taxpayers Foundation, a full 80% of all educational funds are channeled directly into teachers' salaries and pensions. The kids get the crumbs that fall to the floor from the Big-Education smorgasboard.


But that doesn't stop the Big Teachers Unions from playing on the heartstrings of an unwary public with the lament that "it's all about the kiddies."

And these salaries and pensions, for which school-marm Annice Brave was huckstering are not insubstantial. An astounding number of Illinois public school teachers and administrators are pulling down $200k + and $100k + per year for their 9 month jobs.

Get an eyeful of the top paid IL unionized teachers by clicking on the tab "Top 200 teachers salaries" here.

Astoundingly, the top 2 moneymakers in the government education establishment are pulling down in excess of $600k a year!


And the IEA is calling on the taxpayers to pony up even more cash. At a time of near depression-levels of unemployment this strikes many as unconscionable.

Take, for instance, the school-marmish sounding shill, Ms. Brave.

Annice Brave, a high school English teacher, pulls down $70k a year for her 9 month job. That is some pretty heavy cash in a downstate backwash like Alton, where the median income of the families who pay Brave's salary is $36k a year and the median home sells for a paltry $81k.

In fact Ms. Brave's union salary puts her in the veritable economic elite in economically depressed Alton, which has seen 5.6% of its jobs disappear over the past 8 years and where a full 13% of those who remain are unemployed. (Stats are from Zoomprospector Business analytics.)

Yet, the Big Labor honchos of the IEA (and AFT) agitate to squeeze more and more cash from an already wildly overburdened Illinois public.

Reminds me a lot of the old Dennis Moore bit from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In it, Dennis Moore was a reverse Robin Hood who ended up stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

The last strains of the stirring Dennis Moore anthem went:

Dennis Moore,
Dennis Moore,
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.