ORTA endorses three candidates for seats on the STRS Board

Each candidate's response to the ORTA questionnaire is posted below. Be sure you click on "Read more" in order to view the responses from all three candidates.

Name: Elizabeth (Liz) Jones

ORTA STRS Board of Trustee Candidate Screening Questionnaire (Retired Member)

ORTA has a vested interest in who serves on the STRS Board of Trustees. The purpose of this questionnaire is to help ORTA determine whether to ‘endorse’ candidates for election to the STRS board. Retirees vote on retired members seeking election.

1. Please provide ORTA with the resume/bio that you provided to STRS.

I’m a retired High School English teacher and guidance counselor with more than 30 years of experience at Cincinnati Public Schools. Throughout my career I’ve been involved in the fight for fair pay and retirement security for educators – first as my union’s Collective Bargaining Chair during my teaching years, and now as the President of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers Retired, Local 1520-R.

2. What are your main planks to your platform? Please prioritize these platform planks if possible.

Priorities:

• Restore the COLA while working to help restore benefits to active members.

• STRS will need to move to a lower risk investment strategy that can sustainably increase our rate of return, and move away from hedge fund and private equity investments with their costly fees. 

• Ask questions at Board meeting to encourage more engagement from retired members.

• Seek more transparency about STRS work and recording of Board meetings.

• Continue to engage CFT R members in monitoring STRS.

3. Tell us about your background with STRS and any issues that concern you and relate to active members/retired members. What skills (include financial) do you bring to help you deal with the issues you have identified?

I amped up my activism on retirement issues when our COLA was discontinued after 2013 and ran for President of my retiree local shortly after that. As President, I have attended STRS meetings regularly and have mobilized my membership to fight for the reinstatement of the COLA. I’ve also sought out independent information from the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) and the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) that has helped inform my views on improvements that must be made at STRS.

4. Feel free to offer any additional thoughts you have with regards to your candidacy.

I am running because STRS needs a change in direction and that will only happen with new voices and ideas on the STRS Board.

5. What can ORTA do to help you with your candidacy?

Urge STRS members Only members to vote for change and vote for me to the retired member slot.

Name: Julie Sellers, Contributing Member

ORTA STRS Board of Trustee Candidate Screening Questionnaire (Active Member)

ORTA has a vested interest in who serves on the STRS Board pf Trustees. The purpose of this questionnaire is to help ORTA determine whether to ‘endorse’ candidates for election to the STRS board. Retirees do not vote on active member elections but may choose to endorse candidates to our active educator members.

1. What are your main planks to your platform? Please prioritize these platform planks if possible.

I’ve been involved with retirement issues since 2008, when actions were taken to make the system more soluble in response to the Great Recession. Unfortunately, the actions that have been taken in the last 14 years have not stabilized STRS, and contributing members are carrying the heaviest burden from that failure.

We pay the second highest contribution rate in the country (for statewide teachers’ pension systems), yet we’ve seen it become harder and harder to retire with full benefits. I’ll fight to reduce the years of service requirement and reduce or eliminate the age requirement. We can do that with smarter investments, increased transparency, and a long overdue increased contribution from employers. I speak to CFT members everyday and that has given me a great understanding of the wide array of stressors that contributing members are facing as we do our jobs through a global pandemic. Having a secure retirement should not be one of those stressors, it should be a guarantee.”

Priorities

1. Increase revenues to STRS.

2. Restore benefits to active members.

3. Restore a COLA.

4. Maintain a strong STRS pension fund.

5. Ask questions at board members.

6. Seek to make STRS work and information more transparency.

Tell us about your background with STRS and any issues that concern you and relate to active members/retired members. What skills (include financial) do you bring to help you deal with the issues you have identified?

I’m a STRS contributing member, with 20 years of experience as an elementary school teacher before being elected President of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, Local 1520 in 2009. In addition to my role as CFT President, I also currently serve on the Executive Board of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council and the Executive Committee for Ohio Federation of Teachers, and as co-chair of the Ohio 8 Coalition, which is made up of district superintendents and union presidents from Ohio’s eight largest school districts.

I have always fought at the local level to make sure educators can retire with dignity. I’m running for the STRS Board because I want to fight for all educators to have that dignity. I’m not afraid to be a watchdog or to call people and institutions out when needed. I’ll push the Board to be more transparent and to stop doing the same old things that have kept STRS from recovering financially. As a local union president, I have reviewed our local school district budgets but the best quality I will ask questions and fight for active and retired members.

3. Feel free to offer any additional thoughts you have with regards to your candidacy.

In my role in as CFT President, I have attended STRS meetings to speak out for the COLA and for restoration of benefits to active members.

4. What can ORTA do to help you with your candidacy?

Encourage active members on the Members Only site to complete the work OFT and ORTA have done to bring change and elect me to the contributing slot.

Name: Steven Foreman

ORTA STRS Board of Trustee Candidate Screening Questionnaire (Active Member)

ORTA has a vested interest in who serves on the STRS Board of Trustees. The purpose of this questionnaire is to help ORTA determine whether to ‘endorse’ candidates for election to the STRS board. Retirees do not vote on active member elections but may choose to endorse candidates to our active educator members.

1. Please provide ORTA with the resume/bio that you provided to STRS.

(Please also see attached)

I am an active STRS member with 30 years of service. Like many, I went to sleep one evening retiring at 52 and then woke up the next day with a retirement age of 58. I taught ELA for 5 years at Tri-Valley High School in Dresden Ohio. At the same time, I taught Communications and Technical Writing part-time at Zane State College as a way to pay for my education resulting in my M.Ed. in Educational Administration and my Principal's License. I then secured my first job as an assistant HS/MS principal in Northridge Local Schools near Johnstown, Oh.

During that time, I completed my Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent license coursework and secured those certifications. The next year, I was offered an elementary principalship position in Zanesville City Schools. During my time at Zanesville, I have served as the principal of 4 elementary schools, the Director of Continuous improvement, Title One Director, and now I am the Assistant Superintendent. I am not certain of the endorsements that I will be seeking. I plan to lean upon my working relationships and connections as an elected city councilman for the City of Zanesville, Reading Recovery of North America Board Member, Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators Zone 9 Representative, and Regional Prevention Specialist for the Ohio Children's Trust Fund.

I do not want to simply seek an endorsement from individuals or associations to gain the following of their membership. Instead, I want to make my "ask" more of an invitation to rally around the injustice and indifference that one of Ohio's hardest-working professions has experienced at the hands of those who only wish to line their own pockets.

2. What are your main planks to your platform? Please prioritize these platform planks if possible.

First, Redevelop the FAS formula and decrease the actives’ contribution so they are paying more than what their contribution is ultimately worth.

Second, Reinstate the COLA. It was promised.

The problem is really quite simple from a 30,000 foot view: 1. Nobody is successfully guarding the henhouse. 2. Membership is not respected. 3. We need to work to disrupt the status quo. and 4. We all need a VOICE at the table. I will do my best and I fear I will not always succeed, but I want to try. I have been told that my various efforts on a myriad of projects were pointless at several times throughout my career. But in retrospect I have to smile, because I now (at 53) realize that was being said to me by those who feared the change I was suggesting the most.

3. Tell us about your background with STRS and any issues that concern you and relate to active members/retired members. What skills (include financial) do you bring to help you deal with the issues you have identified?

Ted Siedle’s The High Cost of Secrecy is, sadly, no surprise at all to me. It affected me. At the same time that retirees were experiencing a loss of promised benefits, active teachers saw an increase of 40 percent in their contributions to STRS. Active teachers also witnessed an increase in the number of years required to receive full retirement benefits. These changes  resulted in many teachers paying more, working longer, and not receiving the level of benefits previously promised. Therefore, I am working until 58... not 52 as promised. Seems like all of which class-action lawsuits are made.

John Curry’s, Wade Steen’s, and Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum’s numerous charts, graphs, and other evidence of fiduciary irresponsibility also fail to surprise me. Their data shows a complete indifference on the part of STRS to even acknowledge the impact of their actions, let alone set out to harm its membership. They are receiving bonuses for work that is resulting in NO GAIN for its members. I would like to remind them all that they work for us, because without their profiting off the backs of hard-working educators, STRS employees would have nothing- it is that simple.

My goal of being an STRS board member is simple. I refuse to look into the eyes of my mother, an 83 year-old retired second grade teacher, or any of the other numerous family and friends who have worked in one of the most demanding jobs in our society- today and yesterday knowing that they are being robbed for heated sidewalks, privatized parking, exorbitant meals, personal travel, unnecessary artwork, and ridiculous leases throughout the country believing that I can bring these thieving cowboys to justice but instead choosing to do nothing.

My critics can claim I don't stand a chance, but I believe I do because I do not carry a rubber stamp and believe that my accomplishments and service to education in my career can serve as a disturbance to the status quo: that is the beginning to much-needed paradigm shifting. Every employee of STRS, moving forward, must EARN their pay. I queried the salary of Nick Treneff who I was directed to via the STRS switchboard for information on applying to be a board member. I don't know why he had to be called out in order to actually (finally) contact me, but I do know that as an employee of the communications department, his salary exceeds mine.

I am finished with the excuses and demand action. I want to know WHY bonuses are routinely given to underperforming employees. I want to base evaluation on cost-saving measures as well as investment portfolios. I am not an accountant, please be clear on this matter. But I wish everyone to understand that the board members do not HAVE to be. Instead, they hold the fiduciary responsibility to approve the employment of those who can achieve at high levels for our membership. An important part of that is overseeing the evaluations of employees over time.

As an assistant superintendent, I have never held the position of 7th grade biology teacher, but I certainly assure you that I know how to hire and evaluate whether they are serving the needs of students in my middle school. That is why school boards do not have the requirement that all (any) board members hold any experience or expertise in education, administration, food service, transportation, etc. Instead, they determine that needs are not being met and act. It udoes not take a person with financial education to see that while STRS employees have benefited from inflated salaries and bonuses, membership has been stripped of promised benefits and opportunities.

I work closely with the ODE as the federal program manager for my city school district where I control the federal finances of the district as well as three non-publics. Further biographical data will share my duties as they relate to finances. I have also served on certified and classified negotiations and participated in the sale of bonds on Wall Street to save our district's residents many tax dollars.

4. Feel free to offer any additional thoughts you have with regards to your candidacy.

If you deem me less qualified than someone else, then please know that I respect your decision. Truly. Just please know that my heart has led me to this decision to try to enact change. This is about ALL of us. Most importantly, THANK YOU for the work you do and the work you have done. I was only a classroom teacher for 5 years... but that was long enough to KNOW THAT TEACHERS CHANGE LIVES. You do not deserve what has happened to you. At all. Thank you all for your time and consideration. Much more is on the way.

5. What can ORTA do to help you with your candidacy?

First, I need signatures. Lots of them.

Second, I need help disseminating information to ALL STRS MEMBERS. The system seeks to divide us in order to weaken us. We MUST row together. Separately, we stand but only a chance. Together we can conquer. We are the customer and our dissatisfaction should not be ignored.