Teacher Upset She Can't Retire at 47

Teacher Upset She Can't Retire at 47

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/16789

MEA member says reform bill calling for teachers to contribute minimally to retirement is unfair
By TOM GANTERT | April 18, 2012 Follow Tom Gantert on Twitter

Terri List says she would tell her students not to become a teacher in Michigan.
Why?
One of the reasons is because the Saginaw Township Community School District English teacher won’t be able to retire at age 47 as she has hoped.
List was highlighted by the Michigan Education Association as one of the critics of Senate Bill 1040, which would require public school employees to contribute at least 5 percent of their compensation to their retirement plan.
The MEA reported on its website: "Saginaw Township teacher Terry (sic) List had hoped to retire in the next three years when she was 47 years old. That wouldn’t be possible under SB 1040. List would have to work another 16 years to be eligible for health benefits."
“By the time I’m 60, I would have put in 43 years of service, earning a salary at the top of the pay scale. How does that save the district money? You could hire two people for the cost of one and encourage young people to join the profession. Right now, I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.”
List didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
According to the school’s most recent teacher’s contract, List earns between $70,000 and $80,000 a year depending upon her level of education. Factor in expected pay raises over the next 15 years and it’s likely List would make more than $90,000 by the time she retires, said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Van Beek estimated List’s pension would be $60,000 a year in retirement and it would increase 3 percent a year and she would get health benefits when she retired at age 60. Van Beek also said that it is likely that List bought “years of service” because she said she would have 43 years of service by age 60. Van Beek said that practice is basically extinct in the private sector.
Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, called List’s comments “amazing.”
“Wow. They have reached the politicians’ level of entitlement,” Drolet said. “She thinks she is entitled to retire at 47? Holy smokes. I don’t know what more to say to that. A government employee thinking that 47 is a reasonable expectation to retire shows just how deep inside their own bubble they live, insulated from the real world.”
Charles Owens, president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, said tongue-in-cheek that List was “spot on” in her complaint.
“If you want to retire if you are 47, apparently teaching is not the place to go,” Owens said. “The least Terri could do is provide a list of places other people could go so they can retire when they are 47.”

Ha! Charles Owens comment in the last sentence really puts List's nuttiness in perspective. What makes matters worse, is that she is teaching children the self-destructive concept of unearned entitlement.

...:cough: Greece :cough cough:...

Anyone here in the private sector making similar wages expect the same type of retirement?

When she's 60 she'll have put in 43 years of service...

Did she start teaching at 17!?

I wondered the same thing at first. Then, I found this towards the end of the article.

I don't feel any more sorry for her than the "rule of 80" folks don't feel a bit sorry for me having to stay in longer as a "rule of 90" person. Cry me a river, lady.

Some practices allow people to exchange unused sick time for years of experience so they can retire much faster.

hells yeah. My sick time is "use it or lose it." Her's is "use it or retire decades early." Must be nice.

FYI - In Oklahoma schools, you can accumulate up to 120 sick days to count for one year of service. That's it, though.

In the Georgia Teachers Retirement System if you rolled over retirement accounts into GTRS you could buy years of service. IOW, you could turn 6 years of service in GTRS into 10.

Another little perk those of us out here working in the public don't get... I thought teaching was supposed to be a bad deal financially?

I'd take a 401k with company match over the sick day accumulation in a heartbeat.

It pays the bills, but as far as professional positions (require a degree) go, the pay is pretty poor. Some of the benefits are nice. I get the same days off (for the most part) as my kids. Healthcare is provided. I see my kids every day. I get a chance to do something a little different during the summer (although for the last 4 summers, what have I done? Teaching :-p). If you're providing for a family of 4 or less, I think it's a pretty good gig, all things considered. However, since my family has grown to 6, it ain't cutting it anymore. So, there's a very real likelihood that I'll be leaving K-12 education this summer. Giving CareerTech a very serious look.

Do you teach in Oklahoma?

I am all for raising teacher's salaries. The problem with our education system is that it is run by a Federal Agency - The U.S. Department of Education (thank you Jimmy Carter). The ED is ran like most government agencies - it is rampant with waste and high paying positions that in most cases are not necessary and are filled with political cronies. Take for example, here in Oklahoma we have districts with 20 kids and a Superintendent making a 6 digit salary over that district. Then, you look at the government model of unionizing and promising retirement pensions. The problem with that is the government always promises money and then borrows from these funds that should be set aside for that purpose leaving it up to future politicians to figure out a way to repay it. Social Security is the perfect example of that. Finally, the biggest problem I have with it is that merit increases are given on tenure over performance. Our best teachers are the ones that deserve to be rewarded and not the ones that are just along for the ride and hoping for early retirement like the one in the OP.

This is why we need to abolish the ED and move towards a voucher program that rewards the private schools that perform the best. Our good teachers deserve to be fairly compensated and in this model they will. This will attract the best teachers to the best schools and create healthy competition among schools to be the best. If your school doesn't perform, then you don't get vouchers and you don't get paid from the government. This model has been proven to work in some of the most difficult areas such as Washington D.C., New Jersey, etc.

This would put the decisions on where kids go to school back where it belongs with the parents. Additionally, it creates competition, which is always good, among schools to better educate our children. Finally, it will cost less because it will eliminate the government waste and bloat.

Like I said, I'm all for raising teacher's salaries and education - done right.

Yes I do.

I don't have the time to get into the politics of reform, but my main concern is that our rural schools (typically some of our state's best-performing) need to be spared funding-wise and also from further consolidation (most have already gone through it twice).

Vouchers would spare the smaller school districts. Competition does not lead to consolidation - actually just the opposite.

And, as a teacher at a private school in a voucher program - you would have a 401k and manage your own retirement just like in the private sector.

I'm confused. Do you mean to say that a voucher system would increase the number of school districts?

Here's my biggest concern with a voucher system: in theory, I think it would be a good thing. However, if the voucher money is taken off the top before it goes through the funding formula (which the larger school districts will want and will lobby HARD for), then ALL school districts in the state end up paying for Little Johnny in Enid to attend OBA. This would disproportionately affect the smaller districts, and would be unfair to everybody who is not sending students to private schools.

Sound ridiculous? Consider the last round of teacher pay raises (Exhibit A). $3000 per teacher was what the legislature approved, and instead of allotting the money (which, by the way, did not include taxes & retirement - the school districts got stuck w/ that expense) to each district on a per-teacher basis, it got run through the formula. End result - large districts gained money while the smaller districts came up short.

Never underestimate the ability of our legislature and State Dept. of Ed. to totally screw up a well-intentioned idea. Exhibit B - the Oklahoma Lottery.

The more the government attempts to do for others the more they screw it up.

As Poke2000 says, a lot depends on how the funds are collected. Do you get a tax credit for private school tuition? Does the state take the money first and redistribute based on an student's choice of school?

My biggest fear is that vouchers for private schools will end up causing the same problem student loans have. Think of a voucher like a federal student loan (forget that one is your money and the other you borrow, ultimately the school doesn't care where the money is coming from). If a school knows they will have a much larger pool of applicants to choose from, they are happy to take as many applicants as they can support. Now that there is a large increase in the ability of students to attend, competition will be stiff and the schools will increase tuition. The creation of the federal student loan programs were supposed to give everybody access to education, but it also gave universities and excuse to raise tuition exorbitantly over the past 20 years. The government continued to raise the amount you could borrow in order to allow people to meet the rising cost of tuition. Why wouldn't private schools do the same. If the point of the voucher system is to give students who ordinarily would not attend a private school the ability to do so, there is a large incentive for private schools to raise tuition, which in turn would force the government to raise the amount of the voucher to meet the desired effect, otherwise we would once again be back to where we started as the students that attend public school would have to return when the voucher was no longer enough to cover the cost of a private education.

Only option is to raise the voucher amount, or somehow cap the cost of private school education or open more private schools. While the latter may happen as the market demands, it would take decades for new private schools to emerge and gain the reputation as providing an adequate education over public schools.

I personally believe that there is more than enough money collected in taxes to provide the best public education in the world and pay teachers an adequate salary, but the solution is managing revenue better. However, the solution of vouchers just looks like the student loan idea all over again, unless there are safeguards to prevent that.