RH Jones to the Canton Repository re: Repository reader shocked by an uninformed Canton Board of Education:

From RH Jones, October 9, 2007

Dear Editor:

Re: Repository reader shocked by an uninformed Canton Board of Education:

In response to The Canton Repository writer Melissa Griffy Seeton’s column “Canton high school enrollment up”, as an avid Repository reader and retired teacher, I was shocked. Instead of encouraging the public to contact the Honorable State Representative Scott Oelslager, R-North Canton, not to continue the House Bill 315 that he introduced, they should have asked the public to support him. How shortsighted of the Canton Board of Education. Do not they realize that: If this wonderful HB 315 fails, that Canton taxpayers will have to pay it’s professional staff longer into their working years? What teacher in their right mind would retire without Health Care (HC) insurance? While younger school staff teach at the bottom of the salary scale, most elderly, top of the salary scale educators, will work until they are sixty-five when they can draw Medicare. Also, younger staff is generally healthier and use less sick time; consequently, the board pays less in substitute pay as well as less cost for the school system’s HC Insurance. As younger teacher attendance in class is better, students, then, gain by better continuity with class subject matter, presentation and grading.

Does not the Canton Board know that Rep. Oelslager has their best interests in mind? He has crafted a bill that in the long-term will save tax dollars not only for Canton but the whole State of Ohio. Your issue is to pay now or pay later. Taxpayers will be supporting retired teachers, as they show up without HC insurance at the door of emergency room.

The State Teachers Retirement System will begin to eat up the budgeted 1% HC Fund principal by 2009. It will be totally broke by 2021, or sooner. The down stock market of 2000-2001, and inflation of the dollar, has taken its toll on the STRS HC Fund. The STRS pays out $1.2 million per day on HC. After well over 20-years since an employer increase, it is time all the Ohio school districts do the right thing. This cannot be sustained without the help of a change in Ohio law. The HB 315 is just the bill that the doctor ordered; Rep. Oelslager is that doctor. He did his homework. Will the Canton Board do theirs?

Sincerely,

Robert Hudson Jones, a retired STRS member