The Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education is negotiating a successor collective bargaining agreement with the Mahomet-Seymour Education Association. MSEA represents teachers and certified staff, nurses, paraprofessionals, custodians, educational office professionals, registrars, bus drivers, bus monitors, and lunchroom supervisors.

The following timeline summarizes key developments:

Based on the Board's August 31, 2026 package proposal, the items still open at the time of the offer include:

• Salary increases and salary schedule structure
• The Board's monthly health insurance contribution

The following items are still open at this time, but were all verbally agreed to in a previous session.  Since then, the MSEA has sought to revisit and/or open a few of these items.

• The length of the student instructional day at Middletown Prairie and Lincoln Trail Elementary 
• The length of the staff contractual day at all four buildings
• Weekly plan time and the structure of collaboration at the elementary level
• Horizontal movement criteria on the salary schedule based on a change in State law
• No additional personal days

At this time, no additional mediation sessions have been scheduled. However, the Board remains committed to the collective bargaining process aimed at reaching a mutually acceptable agreement. Negotiations may continue, and the parties may reach an agreement at any time.

Public posting is a process established by Illinois law. After mediation has been underway for at least 15 days, either party may initiate the public-posting process. Each party then submits its most recent offer and a cost summary to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB). IELRB subsequently makes those materials public unless the parties have reached an agreement. Public posting does not end negotiations, and the parties may continue to meet and may reach an agreement at any time. School is in session and continues on its normal schedule.

The Board has approached these negotiations with four priorities, each described below.

Recruitment and Retention
Mahomet-Seymour wants to compete for the best staff for our students.  For specialized roles such as speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, social workers, special education teachers, and bus drivers, it can often be quite challenging to fill these positions. The Board's offer raises pay every year, increases the District’s health insurance contributions annually, and substantially increases stipends for the hardest-to-fill roles. 

Financial Responsibility
Mahomet-Seymour reached “Recognition,” ISBE's highest financial designation, in 2022. It had not held that designation since 2016, and as recently as 2019 the District was designated “Watch,” the lowest of the four levels. The Board takes its fiduciary responsibility seriously and does not want the District to return to a lower State designation. The Board's obligation is to reach an agreement the District can honor in year four as reliably as in year one, without reducing programs or increasing class sizes.

Protecting Instructional time
Mahomet-Seymour students currently spend less time in school each day than students in most surrounding districts. The Board views instructional time as the most direct lever it has to support student learning, and it has proposed adding twenty (20) minutes to the K-5 student day beginning in the 2027-28 school year.

Teacher Collaboration Time
Teacher collaboration time is essential to a strong school community. It provides teachers with dedicated opportunities to discuss student needs, share effective practices, plan together, and learn from one another. This collaboration strengthens teaching and helps ensure greater consistency and support for students across classrooms. The District climate survey also reflects strong staff interest in teacher collaboration. The current collective bargaining agreement already provides K-5 Professional Learning Community (PLC) time. The Board's initial proposal would have extended this collaboration to staff in PreK through grade 12. Through negotiations, the Board narrowed it to PreK-5. The Board’s offer maintains this existing collaboration while further defining and strengthening how PLC time is structured and used to support teaching and student learning.

Among the districts included in the comparison, Mahomet-Seymour currently has the second-shortest elementary student day. The student day is 390 minutes, against an area average of 406. The Board's offer would set the student day at six hours and fifty minutes at Middletown Prairie and Lincoln Trail, and continue with six hours and fifty-two minutes at the junior high and high school, beginning in 2027-28. That change adds twenty minutes of instruction per day, which is roughly 58 additional hours over a school year, or the equivalent of about eight and a half additional school days.

No. At the elementary level, the twenty additional minutes of instruction come from time already inside the contractual day. Under the Board's proposal, the staff workday at Middletown Prairie and Lincoln Trail would be forty minutes longer than student attendance. Today the elementary staff workday is sixty minutes longer than student attendance. Under the Board's offer, that differential becomes forty minutes, with the twenty-minute difference going to student instruction. The total length of the contractual day does not change. With a student day of 410 minutes, that produces a contractual day of 450 minutes, or seven and a half hours, which is the length of the current contractual day.

The twenty minutes are shifted from non-student time rather than added to the teacher day. Proposed bell schedules for Middletown Prairie and Lincoln Trail have not been set. Under the Board's proposal, the student day at both schools would fall within a window beginning no earlier than 7:40 a.m. and ending no later than 3:00 p.m., with each building's specific start and dismissal times determined before the change takes effect in the 2027-28 school year.

No. The Board's offer actually increases weekly plan time at Middletown Prairie from 180 minutes to 200 minutes per week. In a typical week, elementary teachers would have at least one personal plan period of no fewer than 40 consecutive minutes during the student day, and buildings may structure that time within a five-day Encore rotation.

The current collective bargaining agreement establishes Professional Learning Community (PLC) time for K-5 classroom teachers, including two collaborations per month. 

A Professional Learning Community, or PLC, provides protected time for teachers to work together around curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student learning. Grade-level teams can review student progress, share effective practices, discuss instructional strategies, and plan next steps together. For example, teachers may collaboratively plan CKLA English language arts units, discuss student learning and instructional approaches, and identify ways to strengthen their practice together as a team.

Mahomet-Seymour sits in the middle of the regional market. Based on 2024-25 data from the State, the District's average teacher salary is $62,028. The Board's offer is designed to keep Mahomet-Seymour competitive within that market in each year of the agreement.

The estimated District cost of average teacher salary and benefits, including District-paid TRS (Teacher Retirement System) and health insurance, is approximately $79,775 per year. These figures reflect the full District cost of an average teacher, including salary schedule step movement, retirement (TRS & IMRF), and District insurance contribution. They do not directly reflect the annual percentage increase, which is 5.0%, 5.0%, 4.0%, and 4.0%. Under the Board’s offer, that amount is projected to increase to approximately $85,931 in year one, $89,418 in year two, $92,561 in year three, and $95,201 in year four.

The total additional money for the Board's offer, including all salary and benefits, increased stipends, and other agreed additions, is approximately $5,632,265 across the four years. The added cost in each individual year is approximately $1,589,332 in year one, $1,458,086  in year two, $1,339,907 in year three, and $1,205,860 in year four. These are the amounts of new money added in each year, not the running total.

The Board’s proposal replaces the $1,000 annual Health Reimbursement Arrangement associated with the lowest deductible insurance option with a steadily increasing monthly contribution that may be applied to any of the District’s three health insurance plans:

Compared with the current $990 monthly contribution, this provides up to:

• $480 more in Year 1
• $840 more in Year 2
• $1,200 more in Year 3
• $1,560 more in Year 4

Over the four-year agreement, the proposal provides up to $4,080 in additional premium support, slightly more than the $4,000 available through a $1,000 annual Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) over the same period.

More importantly, the increased District contribution would be available to employees enrolled in any of the District’s three health insurance plans rather than being limited to one plan. This allows employees to select the plan that best meets their medical and financial needs while still receiving the District’s increased contribution.

The increased contribution also provides more predictable support. It is applied automatically to monthly insurance premiums and does not require employees to incur qualifying medical expenses, pay those expenses upfront, or complete a reimbursement process. An HRA provides value only when an employee enrolls in the designated plan and has eligible expenses to submit. The increased premium contribution helps address the recurring monthly cost of health insurance.

Continued deficit spending reduces the District’s financial reserves and cannot be sustained indefinitely. If expenditures continue to exceed revenues, the District would eventually need to reduce costs through the elimination of staff, student programs, or student services. For example, this would equate to a family spending more money than they earn on a consistent basis year after year or month after month.

Understanding Deficit Spending 

Deficit spending occurs when an entity, in this case, the Mahomet-Seymour School District, spends more money than it generates in revenue during a given fiscal year. For example, if the District spends $1,000,000 in a year but only receives $900,000 in revenue, it operates at a deficit of $100,000. Deficit spending compounds over time unless the District takes active measures to correct it. If the District's annual expenses grow faster than its revenues, the structural deficit expands. 

Impact on Fund Reserves

When the District operates at a deficit, it must draw down cash reserves to cover the shortfall. The Board's offer requires approximately $400,000 from Education Fund reserves in year one, drawn against a $14.0 million balance. That $400,000 is not a fixed amount repeated four times. Each year's increase applies to a larger salary base, while the revenue sources that funded past growth have flattened, so the annual gap widens even if the District adds no new commitments. The draw also reduces the balance that generates interest income, which compounds the effect further.

The other option would be to increase revenue, which would likely raise the tax rate for residents. The Board and community have both been clear about the goal of keeping the tax rate stable.

The Secondary Effect: Loss of Interest Income

Compounding deficits create a second financial strain: as reserve balances shrink, the District loses interest revenue. During Fiscal Year 2026, the District earned over $400,000 in interest within the Education Fund, which was used directly to offset operating expenses such as multiple teacher salaries and benefits.  The latest proposal presented by the MSEA would cause a loss of over $42,000 in interest compared to the District’s last offer. 

Addressing the Deficit

Once a deficit spending pattern has begun, it is very difficult to stop.  There are only two structural ways for a school district to stop compounding deficit spending:

1. Increase Revenue: For an Illinois public school district, the only primary, significant mechanism to raise revenue is by issuing bonds that would increase the tax rate.
2. Decrease Spending: Because personnel expenses make up the vast majority of a school district's operating budget, reductions of any real size require reducing the number of employees, which generally means eliminating staff, programs, or student services.

Mahomet-Seymour has the second-lowest equalized assessed value (EAV) per student among the 25 comparison districts. Its equalized assessed value per student is $139,782, against a group average of $204,614. This means the District has substantially less property value available to support each student than most of the districts with which it competes for staff, limiting its local revenue capacity at comparable tax rates.

Mahomet-Seymour held 154.97 days of cash on hand per the 2025 Annual Financial Report. ISBE's 2025 Financial Profile analysis reports that most Illinois districts hold between 180 and 359 days, and that 180 days is the minimum required to earn the highest score on that indicator. Bond underwriters and financial advisers generally recommend districts keep 40 to 50 percent of annual expenditures on hand at fiscal year-end, which works out to roughly 144 to 180 days.

Mahomet-Seymour sits at the low end of that recommended range and below the threshold for a top profile score. Among the 25 comparison districts, the District ranks 21st. The District has rebuilt this position steadily from 54 days in FY20, but the cushion remains thinner than most neighboring districts carry.  

The District has built this position deliberately over the past six years, with days of cash on hand rising from 54.05 days in FY20 to 154.97 days in FY25.

Among the 25 districts analyzed from the 2024-25 Illinois Report Card, the median average teacher salary was $62,028 and the median days cash on hand was 244.76. Mahomet-Seymour's average teacher salary is $62,028, which is exactly the median. Mahomet-Seymour’s days cash on hand is 154.97, well below the median.

These figures indicate that the District has prioritized staff compensation. Mahomet-Seymour pays at the middle of its market while holding materially less in reserve than the districts around it.

Revenue has exceeded expenditures in the District's operating funds in each of the last seven years, and total operating revenue grew from $28.3 million in FY20 to $47.9 million in FY26. The Board is not claiming the District is in financial distress.

This difference is not money simply sitting unspent. It is fund balance, and the District has used it to rebuild cash on hand from 54.05 days in FY20 to 154.97 days in FY25. That rebuild is what carried the District from a “Watch” designation in 2019 to “Recognition” in 2022. 

The Board's concern is about the direction of revenue, not its current level. Much of the growth above came from sources that have now stopped or flattened: federal pandemic relief, which ended entirely; and annual Evidence-Based Funding increases, which have fallen sharply, especially as the District has recently moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2. A four-year agreement has to be funded from the revenue the District expects to receive in years three and four rather than from the growth of years past.

Expenditures have risen alongside revenue as enrollment has grown, material and supply costs have increased, and over twenty (20) MSEA bargaining unit positions have been added to support students.

The Illinois State Board of Education assigns every district an annual Financial Profile score built from five indicators: Fund Balance to Revenue Ratio, Expenditure to Revenue Ratio, Days Cash on Hand, Percentage of Remaining Short-Term Borrowing Ability, and Percentage of Remaining Long-Term Borrowing Ability. The scores produce one of four designations. From highest to lowest, they are “Recognition,” “Review,” “Early Warning,” and “Watch.”

Mahomet-Seymour currently holds “Recognition” status, the highest designation, with a score of 3.80 for data years 2022, 2023, and 2024. The District was designated “Watch” as recently as 2019, “Early Warning” in 2017 and 2018, and “Review” in 2020 and 2021, and it has moved between designations repeatedly over the past two decades.

The Board's position in these negotiations has been informed and shaped by that history. The District does not want to return to a lower designation, and it wants an agreement whose cost in years three and four does not put the current designation at risk.

The District continues to receive Evidence-Based Funding, but the amount of new tier funding being added each year has declined significantly. New EBF tier funding peaked at $2,018,661 in FY24 and is projected at $291,312 in FY27, an 86% decline.

Total Evidence-Based Funding has continued to grow, but the rate of growth has flattened. Between FY26 and FY27 the total increased by $291,312, compared with average annual increases of roughly $1.19 million over the preceding six years.

Federal pandemic relief (ESSER) provided $2,145,438 in FY22 and $0 in FY26. Total federal grant revenue peaked at $3.1 million in FY22 and returned to $1.1 million in FY26 (Title I, Title II, Title IV, IDEA Pre-K, and IDEA), about where it stood in FY20.

• Title I, II, and IV grant revenue combined fell from $449,434 in FY20 to $254,559 in FY26, a decline of 43 percent.
• Corporate Personal Property Replacement Tax revenue peaked at $982,424 in FY23 and is budgeted at $511,725 for FY27, roughly half the FY23 figure. This revenue source has been volatile from year to year, which is part of why the Board treats it as unreliable for funding ongoing salary commitments.

   

The Board has offered a four-year agreement with the following increases for teachers, custodians, office professionals, paraprofessionals, registrars, transportation administrative assistants, bus monitors, and lunchroom supervisors:

• An increase in the Board's monthly health insurance contribution in each of the four years, and adoption of a Health Savings Account (HSA) memorandum of understanding;
• An increase from $1,500 to $3,500 per year for full-time speech-language pathologists holding the Certificate of Clinical Competence, licensed clinical social workers, and nationally certified school psychologists;
• An increase in the National Board Certification stipend from $3,500 to $4,000 per year;
• A new SAM stipend of $1,000 per semester for the staff member supporting a principal's instructional leadership time;
• Overload compensation for secondary teachers at Masters step 5, 15, or 23 depending on years of experience, with a commitment not to assign overload classes to first- or second-year teachers where practicable;
• Bereavement leave language conforming to the Family Bereavement Leave Act, including leave for miscarriage, failed adoption or surrogacy, unsuccessful fertility treatment, and stillbirth, and up to three sick days for the death of a person equivalent to a family member;
• Notice to the MSEA of any subcontracting of bargaining unit positions, with a commitment to repost those positions with the goal of filling them permanently with bargaining unit members;
• Permission for elementary teachers to leave once students have left the building on the last day of each week and on their PLC day;
• A joint MSEA-Administration committee, meeting twice yearly, to review requested contract changes, with a third meeting in 2026-27 within 60 days of ratification; and
• Agreed transportation and custodian packages, and an expanded schedule of paid holidays for custodians and the high school registrar.

The Board's proposed language is intended to align the collective bargaining agreement with Public Act 104-0795, effective August 7, 2026. The Act sets minimum standards for continuing education coursework a district may recognize for salary advancement or lane changes, and applies to coursework begun on or after July 1, 2026. Under the new law, graduate-level coursework used for advancement must be degree-eligible credit offered through a regionally accredited institution of higher education, documented on an official academic transcript, and taught by an instructor of record.

The language in Section 22.6 Part B of the Board's proposal reflects those statutory requirements. This is not a Board-initiated change to how staff advances on the salary schedule. The statute sets the minimum standard for coursework a district may recognize for salary advancement, and it applies to coursework begun on or after July 1, 2026. The law also expressly preserves the parties' ability to negotiate salary schedules and other compensation-related advancement.

The Board values our staff having access to time off to attend to business that cannot be completed outside the normal workday.  The current collective bargaining agreement provides employees between two and four personal days per year based on longevity.  The Board also values protecting the exceptional instruction delivered by our staff on a daily basis, and the benefits it brings to our student population.  For that reason, the Board is not proposing an increase in personal leave in this agreement. The current provision of two to four personal days based on longevity would continue.