James Carr's FB message for the complicit STRS Board members: If you you're not on the Board to help us, you need to find an exit and leave.

From James Carr

September 15, 2022

To the complicit Board members who still sit on the STRS Board:

If you want to claim that your job is to oversee policy that benefits retired teachers, there are some things you cannot do. More specifically, there are some things you've already done that have to be undone.

You cannot take away a promised annual COLA that tens of thousands of retired teachers already had. A COLA that they have already used as a key determining factor in deciding that they could afford to retire.

You cannot tell active teachers, who are paying an outrageously high 14% of their gross salaries into STRS, that they need to rely on other sources of income to supplement their retirement. It's hard to find other sources when they aren't eligible for Social Security and STRS is bleeding their paychecks dry.

You can't ask teachers, active and retired, to make sacrifices that your own employees and staff refuse to make. When STRS is losing billions of dollars, how in the name of God can you justify 6% salary increases and 10 million dollars in bonuses?

Finally, you can't keep calling STRS an elite public pension fund when thousands of your oldest and most vulnerable members are literally being driven into poverty during the twilight of their lives. Your callous decisions have left them defenseless against inflation that is eating them alive.

You need to listen to Wade and Rudy. You need to listen to the 3 new members. You need to get your priorities straight. If you you're not on the Board to help us, you need to find an exit and leave. Don't wait to be voted out; if you can't help us then please stop hurting us: Resign.