RH Jones: Health care and the 13th check

From RH Jones, January 30, 2008
Subject: Health care and the 13th check!

To all:

The NEA Today, Vol. 26, No. 5., Feb. 2008, Pg. 27 has a 5-page article entitled Violence Against Educators. More info can be had by going to: www.nea.org/ref?threat. Locally Cleveland and Canton news media have reported violence against educators this week. Cleveland reports that a 45-year old female substitute art teacher was attacked by two 7th-grade girls and was sent to the hospital with a head injury and a black eye. Eighteen students face charges in the fight that this unfortunate teacher was trying to break up. (The Beacon & TV) In Canton, the home of a middle-school principal was vandalized. (The Repository)

And yet, there are those in the state legislature who would deny retired educators health care that will be provided for in the way of the remedial HB 315. Those retired educators unlucky enough to become catastrophically ill, can face bankruptcy and loss of their homes. Personally, neither my wife nor I have been hospitalized last year but have a combined federal tax health care deduction of almost $12,000! (It is documented to the penny!)

Not to be forgotten is the, unique to our Ohio STRS, inflation fighting, and fairly calculated, 13th check. That supplement would help pay the taxes and inflationary price increases. From the day we retire, inflation erodes retired educator’s income. The 3% simple uncompounded COLA simply does not keep us up. And the STRS cannot keep up without HB 315. While the investment staff at STRS has done well recently, investment income cannot do it by itself.

There some legislators, who claim our public school districts, and their employed educators, both present and past, do not, and did not, produce students that test as well as other industrialized countries. That is totally false. They do not take into consideration that foreign countries do NOT test ALL the students. Those who are incapable are shifted to workshop classes early on. And they, then, test only their academically capable students. We teachers here in Ohio and, and for that matter in all America have been governmentally required to test them all – an unfair comparison. No child left behind, I wonder?

Without the much-needed steady stream of retired educator health care funding provided for in HB 315, is it no wonder that education colleges are having trouble-recruiting students? Recent federal statistics report that only 9% of teachers in elementary schools K-6 are male, and there are only 22% male in grades 7-12th. Security in teacher retirement would help attract and keep top quality college graduates, both male and female, attracted to the teaching profession. The best, is not this what we want for our children? They cannot wait until the next election. The time for the legislature to increase retired teacher support, shown in HB 315, is now.

RHJones, a retired Ohio STRS member