RH Jones: 2009 brings a smaller STRS check

From RH Jones, January 6, 2009

To all:

As a retired career teacher, my annual income in 2009, from my Ohio STRS, will be less than that of 2008. I would like to remind our STRS board, it’s employees, and the state’s politicians that the majority of retired educators live and spend their checks all across the state. This represents a positively considerable impact on Ohio’s economy. Personally, I have done without an inflation fighting a 13th “Supplemental Check” for over 10-years while my STRS “out-of-pocket” health care (HC), for my spouse and me, has increased my costs. There are thousands of retired teachers in similar, if not worse, situations. Therefore, is it no wonder that Ohio is hurting too?

Also, is it no wonder then that fewer and fewer males are choosing the education profession? Both male and female students are suffering a loss of the male image at a time when so many families do not have a male in the home. A happy and productively healthy society is dependent on a happy and productively healthy teacher in the classrooms. Part of it is a teacher in the classroom knowing that he or she will have a decent retirement situation. In that aspect, the future looks bleak; Society will fail without this just reward. It is now a necessary cost to citizens not caring in the past for those who gave so much of themselves to the public’s youngsters.

On the federal level, although I paid 20 points or so into Social Security (SS), I do not qualify for that income. In order to get the remaining points to qualify for SS, I was too “burned out”, after 33-years of public service, to work a job that pays into it; And due to the federal so-called “Windfall” Elimination, I cannot collect spousal SS. All this lost income not only hurts both my faithful spouse, it hurts me and those establishments where this income denied us would have been spent!

Educators have been slighted financially long enough. This retired public school teacher is not asking for welfare. We were, and are, part of the cost of educating a civilized society dependent upon one another for survival in a competitive new world order. Without professional educators, and a decent retirement for them, society will fail to compete.

One educator’s opinion,

RHJones, retired