“Unsettling
observations arrived in an email from Illinois TRS Annuitant Trustee Bob Lyons
in the last few days. I am not sure if
you received it or not – but it was one small spate in a torrential confluence
of disturbing educational news for our state and for the nation overall. In
Illinois, young and aspiring teachers face not only the mountainous ascent of
learning to teach in today’s data-driven assessment environment but also to
withstand a losing fiscal future forcing them to pay more into an underfunded
system and later be punished after retiring for meeting their Tier II
requirements…
“In
very short order, we citizens of Illinois will face the issue of whether the
state of Illinois meets federal standards in meeting its ‘safe haven’ for
federal employer tax benefits after shorting the state employees. In other
words, Illinois makes a significantly lesser payment to the state workers’
retirement system than it would need to with Social Security because it meets –
or used to – federal thresholds in eventual pension obligations; on the other
hand, now Tier II employees pay more and get less than the expected levels. The
General Assembly shirked its first duty to fund the pensions, then put it on
someone else, and now may be called into question – and they are we.
“According
to Lyons, this may be a factor (among others) in a disturbing trend in
Illinois among the pool of potential and able educators. ‘Wednesday we learned from our actuaries
based on their experience review that they assume that only 37% of our 25 year
old teachers will retire from teaching in our state. It would be expected
that only a couple percent will die or be disabled before they can retire, so
the great majority that will leave will either quit all together, be dismissed,
or transfer to another state. About 63% will never see a monthly retirement
check.’
“…[W]hile the educational workforces in Illinois and
other states face the national/federal legislations which have wrought a combination
of under-resourced public schools, a preferential treatment for development of
private or charter school alternatives, the loss of job protections, unfair
teacher evaluation methods based on testing assessments, an exponential
increase in the amount of mandated standardized testing and the loss of
professional autonomy – the state of Illinois has added Tier II to make being
an educator just that much more punishing a profession…”
For the complete article by John Dillon, click here.
I used to get emails from Bob, but not in many months. Tier II will sue and win.
ReplyDelete"I quit." will be replaced with "I won't take that job."
ReplyDelete