Cathy Steinhauser defines "fiduciary" for the STRS Board...for the fifth time

Cathy Steinhauser's speech to the STRS Board

October 20, 2022

Cathy Steinhauser, 35 yrs., a satellite teacher w/Pickaway-Ross CTC in the Circleville City School District - Family & Consumer Sciences.

STRS needs to stop the monthly propaganda of telling the membership, in emails (like E-News) and other postings, how great the system is and that is called "gaslighting". You need to acknowledge the problems you have created for this membership and find solutions to those problems. Many of us have suggested for months what to do, even a couple of the board members pointed out ways to solve certain issues - but you continue to deny the existence of problems which shows ignorance and your need to perpetuate the "status quo". Some of those issues are 1) restoring COLA permanently, 2) STRS staff and STRS investment group to "share in the sacrifice" of lost billions by way of caps or lowered salaries and NO bonuses,

3) More stable and prosperous methods of investing, 4) Reducing STRS staff as well as the investment staff, 5) Selling/renting the STRS building, to name a few. The more time spent on NOT trying to accomplish these results in more time lost in restoring our pension.

I have also observed, since attending board meetings that six members still are not being proper fiduciaries for the membership of teachers and once again, I repeat myself:

A Fiduciary is:

"A person who acts on behalf of another person or persons, putting their client's interests ahead of their own, with a duty to preserve good faith and trust. Being a fiduciary requires being bound both LEGALLY AND ETHICALLY to act in others best interests."

I have now stressed this definition of your job as a board member for the 5th time. Last month you began to throw around this word but it needs to be actively and earnestly utilized in every aspect of your time on this board.

STRS is NOT a premier pension plan. When I began teaching in 1980, it may have been but over the decades STRS has managed to make our pension one of the worst due to your terrible decisions as fiduciaries and an investment staff who doesn't seem to know how to invest our money to get the best return to restore issues previously stated. What a mess you have created! You need to quit voting against your membership and get serious about change…change for the teachers who own this pension, Yes, WE Own This Pension, and you need to change it in our favor.

STRS also removes our members' comments on the STRS Facebook page. Did you all know that to do so is illegal?? Blocking users or deleting comments because they express critical opinions is against the Constitution, namely the First Amendment, and principles of transparency. I seem to recall that STRS claims to be transparent but I've discovered that's an outright lie. We have free speech rights when using social media as the Constitution guarantees this right and it doesn't go away when any one of the membership goes online. You cannot interfere with our freedom of speech because we have a right to expressing our thoughts. I've read that when someone gets censored on a public forum, the individual expressing themselves usually is correct in their post. I want the STRS Facebook page to stop posting false information in order to present themselves as they are not.