A Repository reader on rehires: Usually it’s administrators, not teachers, who have salaries of $90,000-plus

Canton Repository, January 29, 2007
Letter to the Editor

The headline of a Dec. 28 Associated Press story from Columbus piqued my interest. It read: “Retired teachers rehired at high salary, collect pension as well.” When I read the article, I realized how terribly misleading the headline was.

“The greatest increase has come,” the article asserted, “among educators who have been rehired at jobs paying more than $90,000 a year while also collecting a retirement pension.” Teachers?

As of 2005-06, only two districts in Ohio paid teachers the maximum salary, based on longevity and degrees, of $90,000 or more. However, many district-level and building-level administrators in our state do command such salaries. All too often, they are then retired and rehired by local boards at full salary in addition to a full pension.

The recent action taken by the State Teachers’ Retirement System board to require local boards to pay health benefits for those whom they retire, then rehire, as of 2009, is a step in the right direction, though it constitutes nothing more than a simple act of cost-shifting. Meanwhile, brain drain continues in our state at an alarming rate in the field of education, with countless college-educated Ohioans being lured to the southern and western parts of the country with teaching jobs.

As long as the “shortage of administrators” myth is perpetuated by those who stand to gain the most from it, teachers licensed and qualified to become building administrators, and building administrators licensed and qualified to become district administrators, will have minimal opportunities for advancement.

For the qualified and licensed graduates of our colleges and universities with teaching degrees, a career in another state will, in many cases, be their only option. Perhaps our most recent “education governor” could address this problem as a way to keep highly educated Ohioans in Ohio. I’m not holding my breath.

RALPH E. JENTES, LAKE TOWNSHIP