Retired teachers living on easy street?

Our ANTI friends repeatedly claim that teachers are over paid and under worked. One infamous ANTI bloggers in the North County Times article comment sections repeatedly claims that teachers are paid 100K a year to work seven months. I know it make no sense to me either. This blogger is corrected over and over again. Links to the actual VUSD teacher salary schedule make no difference to him. He just repeats the lie.

Another ANTI blogger repeatedly blogs that retired teachers make 80 to 100K and that their pensions are bankrupting VUSD. I point out that all the money for retired VUSD teachers comes out of a STATE fund called STRS. No retirement pension money for currently retired teachers comes from the VUSD budget. I point out that retired teachers like myself make less than 25K a year with NO medical benefits. Many of us do not even qualify for medicare. (Unbelievably California teachers of a certain age were prevented by law from contributing to Medicare and so in retirement do not qualify). No matter how many times are ANTI public education friends are corrected they continue to post their inaccurate comments.

Today in the Letters to the Editor section a retired teacher living in Fallbrook, Genie Summers replied to the teacher bashers. The link and contents of the letter are below:

http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/article_02215c42-0173-53d1-aa8e-a1d97c405279.html


Hoping to set the record straight

As a retired teacher, I would like to clear up some misconceptions on a few points regarding teachers' pensions. Many people seem to think that teachers receive their pensions as a "free" benefit, when in fact they pay into their own retirement accounts. The average retired teacher paid into his/her retirement for more than 26 years and receives less than $2,700 per month in benefits.

Unlike corporate workers, teachers are required to contribute to their own pensions (usually 8 percent) to the California State Teachers' Retirement System, which is higher than the rate private workers pay for Social Security. In general, teachers are not eligible for Social Security, so their CalSTRS pension is their only income in retirement. Few teachers receive medical benefits, if any at all, from their school districts.

Teachers don't enter this profession to get rich. However, they make contributions in good faith, were promised a pension in return and should be able to depend on this modest retirement income.ˇ Please do not "lump" our retirement program with those of other public employee pensions or school administrator pensions. Thank you for this opportunity to present the facts.

Genie Summers
Retired elementary teacher
Fallbrook