RH Jones: Employer increase needed

From RH Jones, April 13, 2010
Subject: Re: Jim Stoll: STRS Active Board Candidate Responds To Tim Myers STRS VICE CHAIR - Statement to Ashland City School Reps
Molly, Jim, Tim & all:

How can anyone who was endorsed by a union (OEA), that spent a lot of money getting him elected, vote for extending retirement age from 30 to 35-years of service. There are few "gravy jobs" in the field of education. Personally, even though I would have had a 6% raise my next year of teaching, I, for one, "hit the wall" as a Marathon runner may do, and could not go another step -- not even another day. This was true even as the following year's students had the reputation of a thirst for learning and, consequently, behaved well. However, it would have not been right for me to teach them after the extreme stress of my last year. And, to make matters even worse, each year grows a multitude of more classroom regulations, restrictions on the freedom to teach, physical/mental assaults by students, parents and, yes, even incompetent and anti-teacher administrators who do not back their teaching staff.

And, yes, I know that the STRS may not now be able to pension teachers with 30 years, but Ohio will pay one way or the other. If the 35-year restriction passes in the legislative halls of Ohio, I predict that there will be an increase in disability retirements that could even be more costly for our STRS. "Burnout" is a serious problem with teaching as it is with our brother and sisters in police work. Today, even though as a retired teacher I would benefit by teachers toiling longer before retirement, I can strongly sympathize with those actively teaching today, and would expect that their OEA would fight "tooth and nail" for them to be able to honorably retire with the same, or even better, benefits than those of us already retired.

If the teacher is doing her/his best, and I think the vast majority do, the act of teaching is known to be extremely exhausting. Every teacher understands this and pay their union dues so that they can have timely retirement without penalty. Not all school districts are the same. Good middle class school systems are widely known to be the easiest. Many pay better than the difficult systems; do not punish them or their students even more by making them have to teach 35 years before full retirement. Does not every one know this? I have said this before and I will say it again: For the sake of today's and Ohio's future Pre-K-16 there needs to be an employer increase; never mind that it costs; for without proper or even sacrificial spending on education, we are left prone to a greatly diminished standard of living that invites foreign takeover of our system of freedom for the individual.

It is not the job of active or retired teachers to find the funds to support OH STRS. This is what we pay the STRS staff for; and this is why we contribute to PAC funds to elect enlightened OH political representatives who have brains enough to realize the difficulty of the job of teaching; but yet the importance to the economy and security that an educated population can deliver. These are my thoughts.

In sympathy with the active teachers,

RHJones, retired PUFL OEA "member builder"