“A teacher who retires with 30 years of experience receives 51% of average final salary. This is not generous from a comparative perspective.”
Are you VEA people nuts??? I retired from a Fortune 10 company with 30 years and got 20% of my salary.... 51% payout is VERY GENEROUS, compared to the private sector!!
“A teacher who retires with 30 years of experience receives 51% of average final salary. This is not generous from a comparative perspective.”
The defenders of pension plans speak in misleading terms. Most teacher plans would pay a higher benefit rate than 51 percent but other details are important such as the COLA, minimum retirement age, highest average salary details, and contribution rates. The average age of teacher retirement in Colorado is 57 with 75 percent of HAS. The COLA has been reduced from 3.5 percent to 2 percent but there is litigation about the COLA so the issue is not settled. The HAS period was 3 years but it is now 5 years. There are also many other goodies such as service credit purchase.
Plus, there are no retirement deductions from a pension. I know several retired teachers whose retirement check is actually larger than their take-home pay was. The myth of underpaid teachers should have died 50 years ago.
To put it into perspective, my teacher neighbor here in Ohio complained to me that after SB5 was implemented by Gov. Kasich (Thank You Governor!!! Good first step!) she saw $300 less in her monthly paycheck.
This is the amount that teachers in Ohio are finally paying for their health care and pension - which tells me that multiplied by the number of teachers in Ohio, that is how much we the taxpayers have been giving to them - while no one is giving the rest of us anything.
And teachers across the country retire at 55 (or younger) with 51% of their normal salary - paid for by We the People.
WHy do these folks not understand why we are so ticked off? My neighbor expected me to sympathize with her plight. In the interest of good neighbor relations, I didn’t say what I wanted to say to her.
Especially since BOTH my husband and myself are unemployed, and debating giving up on the job hunting to try to survive the rest of our lives on our savings.
“30 years of experience”
Actually, it’d be 24 years, considering they’re working about 9 months of each year. Not bad in my book... just as lucrative as what a typical military retiree receives... and the risk to life and limb to the military member is far greater.
Stop whining, teachers.