Pennslyvania Teachers Retirement Funds Says it Needs Billions More From Taxpayers
And the taxpayers aren’t too happy about their request.
The Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement Fund said today its “plan net assets” used for calculating future pension subsidies shrank to $43 billion at June 30, from $63 billion a year ago.
As a result, PSERS is calling for an 8.22% payroll surcharge on all school payrolls in 2010-11, to be financed by state taxpayers and local property taxpayers, up from this year’s 4.78% levy.
Here’s just a sample of the comments on the article:
Ridiculous. At least they still have retirement funds unlike most of the rest of us-and I don’t see anyone else stepping up to help replenish our 401Ks….and then to go about it by taking our money? Forget it
End all pensions….today. Re-direct into 401K’s and go with the market. In today’s world NOBODY is owed a pension. Nobody.
Deferring pension payments. Didn’t the Legislature allow the City of Philadelphia to do the same scheme earlier this year? Wait until that bill comes due. Let’s face it. We’re broke.
“Devoted Teacher” weighed in:
Teachers pay into their pensions to the tune of 7.5 percent of their paycheck – they’re not getting anything for free. Everyone hired at any job who was originally promised a pension should get one. If employers don’t want to offer new employees pensions, that’s up to them, but despite the claims of some bitter posters, everyone who was promised a pension as a result of loyal service deserves to get what they were promised. As for the posters who imagine teachers only work six hours a day (which immediately reveals an inability to tell time, as hours are generally from 8:20 to 3:09), this may be true on the planet where you reside, but in Philadelphia and, I’m sure, around the country, teachers spend extra hours lesson planning, grading papers, designing and preparing projects to the tune of what amounts to at least an extra day’s worth of work every week. On top of that, we have to pay to spend our off-time getting advanced degrees. Your ignorance speaks to what happens when people “assume.” I’m sure you know that old saying.
And got a response:
TO DEVOTED TEACHER, JUST A COUPLE THINGS: As taxpayers, even with your contribution, we still pay over 80% of your pension. In the private world we pay for our own – with minimal or zero contributions from our employer. If the market goes down, we the taxpayers do not tax ourselves to make up the difference. You can’t get fired as a teacher. By example, In Los Angeles, with 40,000 teachers, not one was fired between 1990 and 2000, I’m sure the numbers in PA are similar — are you guys really that good? All of you? How many layoffs have their been in the public teaching field in PA? You get premium health coverage, including dental, vision, disability etc. for you and your family for life paid by us stiffs.
Your work time after you subtract for lunch is about six hours per day. I don’t recall ever working less than 10 hours per day. I start before 8:20. If I ever left at 3:00, I would consider that working just about a half day. Would wonder what to do with the time. Although you work only 180 days per year compared to the 235 or so that the rest of us work, you continue to receive approximatly 17 days of sick and vacation time per year. And since you don’t need to use it, because you get every holiday and summers off, you are allowed to accrue it forever and get a nice lump sum payment when you decide to retire or leave. Can you please let us know anyone in the private sector that receives anything remotely close to that? You want to be treated like professionals such as lawyers and doctors, which is kind of ridiculous, but I don’t know any that have virtual lifetime contracts, cannot get fired, do not receive reviews of their work, take no risk, work about 1,000 hours per year, can retire at 53 years of age and receive lifetime benefits for longer than you actually worked.
PA teachers’ pension fund wants billions more from taxpayers
Being a teacher for the 29 years I would like to repond to some of the comments being made about the teaching profession. Before you write in and make a comment please get the facts. I don’t know where you think a teacher can’t get fired. Get on the state education web site. They made it real easy to see just how many teachers have gotten fired or lost their teaching certificate which in my mind is the same as getting fired. If you think we work only 6 hours a day, get real. I would like you to talk to my wife so she could tell you how many times she yelled at me for bringing my work home or taking it with me when we were on vacation. That’s right!!! VACATION!!! So please don’t tell me that I only work 6 hours a day. For you people who still think we get paid for the summer, what color clouds are in your world. I’m not claiming that teachers have the hardest job out there. But, please don’t make it sound like we have a cake job and get paid high salaries for doing next to nothing. What I don’t understand is the people who think we have it so noce, why not go to college get a degree and become a teacher and get the benefits your complaining about If you have the drive to do this, work as a teacher for at least 5 years. I guarantee your attitude will chnage about the teaching profession.
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Mondo Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 21:18
Ron,
I taught for some years–after being in business–then I left teaching and went back to business. Who knows? I might return one day. I enjoyed it.
But, I used to say two things in the teachers’ lounge:
1-If you think teaching is hard, leave for a year, go sell furniture or mine coal. You’ll be kissing the lounge floor when you get back that you’re employed as a teacher.
2-You can’t pay a good teacher enough. But, not everyone’s a good teacher. If you’re a teacher, then you know that far too many are more concerned with anything but teaching. Unfortunately, the teachers’ unions have made it almost impossible for these people to be replaced. I used to say that you had to rape the principal’s daughter in order to get fired. In our county, I can only remember 2 teachers getting fired in a 24-year period.
When teachers get serious and demand that their unions reward good teaching, then people will get serious about returning teachers to the status they had in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Teachers want to be treated as “professionals” but act like anything but. The only thing that qualifies them as ‘professionals’ would be their argument of continuing education–which unfortunately, as I’m sure you well know–involves many times taking classes in Communications, Education, anything but their core teaching fields.
Again, I’m not saying that this is all teachers, but the good ones have allowed the others to co-opt them and the public has taken notice. Teachers should do something about that instead of attacking the people who pay the bills.
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