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Older teachers should make room for new applicants; George Honchar; Beaver County Times; June 13, 2016.
According to the BCT, “The writer is a Carlynton School Board member.”
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“The key to correcting our state’s finances is correcting our public retirement imbalance. A huge 8 percent of our state’s general fund is spent to pay for pensions. Worse, as Gov. Corbett stated in 2013, 60 percent of all new tax money coming into our state’s coffers goes to retirement payments.”
[RWC] Years ago, the Governor, General Assembly, labor union management, and school boards made the mess Mr. Honchar described, yet he chose to dump the blame on “on old teachers, refusing to retire, well past retirement age, selfishly denying teaching positions to their young potential replacements.”
I would not want to be a teacher in Mr. Honchar’s school district.
“The PSERS retirement system, is a huge part of this dysfunction. As set up, PSERS actually works against teachers retiring. ‘The system’ encourages them to continue teaching well after the usual retirement age of 55, allowing many to be paid over $100,000 in salaries. Then at 30 years they get 80 percent of their top salaries, at 40 years, 100 percent. Many Pennsylvania teachers make more in retirement that most of the taxpayers supporting them make at the height of their own careers!”
[RWC] When did 55 become “the usual retirement age?”
“In the North Hills School District, a third of teachers are at the top of their pay scale, and nearly 40 percent are still teaching past the usual to retirement age. Most of the 40 percent are being paid near or above $100,000 per year, their year being 10 months. And well-educated recent college graduates are scraping by on low-paying jobs, yet still required to pay tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, waiting for the old teachers to finally retire. But with the way PSERS is set up, there is a disincentive to retire.”
[RWC] Perhaps those “well-educated recent college graduates” should have chosen fields of study that had a better chance of landing them a job. My father was an electrical engineering student at Carnegie Tech. After a couple of years, Dad saw there would be a glut of EE graduates when he would graduate. As a result, Dad switched to industrial engineering even though it added two more years of study. As a result, Dad had no problem getting a job when he graduated during the Great Depression.
“How out of balance? Last year for one elementary position in the Carlynton district, there were over 600 applicants.
“In 2002 each school district had to pay 5 percent of each of its teacher’s salary toward the PSERS fund. That forced contribution has grown to over 30 percent in 2016, and will surpass 35 percent in just a few years to pay PSERS current $37 billion unfunded debt.
“So when we complain of our ever-increasing high property taxes, much of the blame should not be put on our school boards, but on old teachers, refusing to retire, well past retirement age, selfishly denying teaching positions to their young potential replacements.”
[RWC] I appreciate the predicament school boards are in. That situation, however, doesn’t justify bashing “old teachers” doing nothing wrong.
© 2004-2016 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.