RH Jones: End-of-year bonus (HC) for retired teachers?

From RH Jones, December 4, 2007

Subject: End of yr. bonus HC for retired teachers?

To all:

Last week a police report has indicated that an Akron High School Principal was severely assaulted in the hallway by a student who had been recently transferred for discipline reasons. It took 3 teachers to pull the attacker off of the principal. This student had been transferred from building to building 4 times! The principal was taken to the hospital and the male student was taken to jail, where he remains. School authorities have not mentioned this attack. I wonder how many others go unreported across Ohio?

This is just another example that educators deserve their employers to provide the 2.5% contribution to the STRS for continuation of retiree health care (HC). Physical assaults of this severity will surely follow this unfortunate principal well into retirement years. I am sure he will suffer mentally with PTSD long after his physical wounds heal.

Also, many retirees were required by their school boards to have X-rays for TB. Have some of them developed lung cancer because of it? Many teach in buildings heavy with asbestos. Have, or will, some of them develop lung cancer because of it. Here in my hometown of Norton, the Loyal Oak Elementary School was torn down due to being full of asbestos. The other old Norton schools probably have it as well. Staph infections and other childhood infections are still another factor in the need for retired educator HC.

I am sure that this principal and all the rest of us educators have earned retirement HC. It is time the Ohio Legislature passed HB 315. A small well deserved and earned End of Year Holiday Bonus.

Robert Hudson Jones, retired STRS member