HINSDALE, Ill. – Tuesday, OpenTheBooks.com released a spending report for 928 Illinois school districts. Each report covers pensions, salaries, and vendor spending. Each individual school district is benchmarked on spending vs. consumer price index (CPI) inflation.

“In my hometown of Hinsdale, the salary spending since 2000 is up over 76% vs. inflation,” OpenTheBooks founder Adam Andrzejewski said. “The average salary is over $105,000 (2012) and 223 employees making over $100,000 per year. Incredibly, the teachers are threatening to strike.”

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Click here to download a PDF copy of your school district’s SNAPSHOT Spending Report. An overall view of what OpenTheBooks found in their research includes:

* 5,930 retired educators have $100,000+ annual pensions. In 2014, the number of six figure pensions increased by 24.4% from 4,767 (2013).

* 20 months- retired educators on average “broke even” their own pension investments. In other words, retired educators were “paid back” within 20 months of retirement.

* Salary Abuse Case Example: In 2012, administrator Mohsin Dada double-dipped pensions and now cleans off over $494,000: current salary of $239,895 and retirement pension of $254,700. High pension is result of obscene salary spike from $156,160 to $358,750 before “retirement.”

* 16,257 of 162,960 active educators earn over $100,000 per year- collectively, costing $1.977 billion. In five years, the number of employees earning a six figure salary increased by 69.5%!

* What’s Going On? Teachers Retirement System is slow-walking the 2013 salary numbers– 2012 is the latest salary year available and 2013 salaries will not be available until October 15!

* Salary Abuse Case Example: In Oak Brook D53, Sandra Renner made $288,240 (2012), up from just $138,161 in 2001. Renner retired on a pension of $210,480. The pension is higher than all but 5 of her active salary years.

* In 2013, nearly $40,000,000 was paid out to various unions-Illinois Education Association and National Education Association received the most. But, even the Teamster’s received funding.

* Spending tens of millions spent on taxi cabs. In 2013, over $11.1 million was spent on taxi cabs with over $71,000,000 in payments since 2006.

* At least $55,000,000 million was paid out to “consultants.” With over 16,000 administrators and educators earning a six-figure salary, why were so many extra experts needed?

* Schools spent at least $4,000,000 on hotel rooms in the finest resorts and destinations across America (2013). Searches for “Marriott” and “Hyatt” rendered $1,254,078; but, only $1,359 for Red Roof Inn & $16,405 for Super 8/Motel 6.

OpenTheBooks.com’s executive summary is available HERE.

Published with permission.