Twenty-nine District 205 teachers have filed retirement notices that entitle each to four years of 6 percent annual raises under the Elmhurst Teachers Council (ETC) contract.

Fifteen plan to leave at the end of the 2029-30 school year, and 14 plan to retire after the 2028-29 year, Patch reported after obtaining the lists through a public records request. All filed by the Aug. 15 deadline.

The raises matter because Illinois calculates a teacher's pension using the average of the four highest consecutive years of earnings in the last decade of service. Critics call the practice "pension spiking." The state, not the local district, pays the employer share of teacher pensions through the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS). In fiscal year 2026, the state is projected to contribute $6.5 billion to TRS, covering 98.2 percent of non-member contributions, according to state pension figures published in CPS's fiscal year 2026 budget.

No dollar estimate of the total pension cost of this cohort's raises was available in public records.

That structure means D205 taxpayers do not directly bear the long-term pension cost of the 6 percent raises. State taxpayers do.

A 2005 Illinois law requires districts to cover the full cost of end-of-career raises above 6 percent that boost retirement benefits, according to published research on the practice. Raises at or below that threshold remain subsidized by the state. Many Illinois teachers' union contracts set end-of-career raises at exactly 6 percent, Patch reported.

This cohort is larger than recent ones. Patch reported in 2024 that 19 D205 teachers were set to retire in 2028. A year before that, 13 were on the list for 2027.

The District 205 Board of Education approved a three-year ETC contract for more than 715 members in June 2024, with salary schedule increases of 3.4 percent, 3.0 percent and 2.9 percent over three years, according to a district announcement. Board President Athena Arvanitis cited "strong financial stewardship" as a goal when the board approved the contract on June 19, 2024.

That contract runs through June 2027. Whether the 6 percent end-of-career raise provision carries into the next agreement has not been publicly addressed by the district or the union.