Dive Brief:

• Illinois’ new schools superintendent, Tony Smith, is getting a pay bump to make up for landing in a lower tier of the state’s teacher pension system.
• The lower tier was intended to help the state’s burgeoning pension costs by offering new employees lower benefits and tighter rules on when they can retire and receive benefits.
• In total, Smith will receive $225,000 in salary, plus pension and a suite of extra perks, and what’s expected to be thousands in a special stipend intended to raise his overall pay to the higher tier of pension benefits.

Dive Insight:

If Smith were a Tier I employee, he would receive roughly double what he does as a Tier II employee, which amounts to around $23,000 a year. Other high-ranking administrators, including the executive director of the teacher pension system, also receive Tier II benefits but have not been offered a similar stipend to compensate for the difference.

The news of his extra bonus comes as Illinois and the city of Chicago, which is on a different pension system, are in the midst of a contentious overhaul of their pension structures. The law restructuring Illinois pensions, which passed in 2010, has been criticized as unfair and damaging to the state's ability to hire the best teachers.

A state school board spokesman said the stipend was intended to also match what his predecessor, Christopher Koch, received. When the Chicago Tribune asked Steve Grossman, a representative for the North Suburban Teachers Union, what educators would think of the stipend, Grossman replied, “I think they would find that to be hypocritical.”