Chuck Chapman's speech to STRS Board, November 15, 2007

I am Chuck Chapman, life member of OEA and ORTA with thirty-two years of teaching service. I am Legislative Chair for Medina County RTA.

We are still waiting for the child care center to be cost neutral. We would like to see it make a profit rather than be cost neutral. Our country is full of child care centers. They are a necessity today. They operate child care centers in the black. Why can't we, as intelligent, educated professionals, operate a child care center in the black?

With Dr. Asbury leaving, it does not seem necessary to me to engage in a wide search for a replacement. We have among us and on the board a person who could and would do the job. Dr. Leone has dedicated the last several years of his life to help keep STRS healthy and stable and to protect our health care. With the great staff we have, I am sure that Dr. Leone would do a great job. He would help restore our faith in STRS. The savings for a lot of us would be substantial. We could stop making this trip to Columbus on a monthly basis.

I urge you today to support Dr. Leone's motion to help control spending. We do not need any more severance pay and paid health care for temporary staff when we retirees are making cuts and are paying more for their health care. The next cost for generic medicine will be $65.00. That is miles from the $5.00 I paid when I first retired in 1983. We need to give some thought about a sliding scale for health care. Those who have retired before I did are just not making it the way things are being done.

I am 77, with poor health. I can no longer work, even at Wal-Mart. The increases are making that 1983 check look pretty small. Especially since when I retired, neither my wife nor I paid for health care. We have lived a prudent life, but could not anticipate the changes that are happening.

I have confidence in our Board to be fiscally responsible and to do all they can to keep the system operating, and to try to take better care of us old, feeble educators.