By these comments, it seems like Greenwald and the current board are trying to grab this thing by the tail. If someone is paid money for unused vacation pay, I'm not sure how that can be called a raise. If that's part of the six per cent. then the employee should take any and all vacation days due him/her prior to their leaving. They still get paid but it doesn't increase the pension or penalty. Interesting to see where this goes.
Granite City Unit 9 Superintendent Jim Greenwald said some of Unit 9’s raises that topped 6 percent are due to terms of teacher contracts or late-career promotions. He said the district has been reducing its penalties over the past few years.
“We have continued to make efforts to minimize these high amounts as much as possible,” Greenwald said.
For example, he said, in 2013-14, the district’s penalty was only $1,700