Marilyn Peacock to STRS Board: You are supposed to work for us. Please start voting like you do.

Marilyn Peacock’s speech to the STRS Board 

May 18, 2023

Good morning.

My name is Marilyn Peacock. I taught 34 years, seven at third grade, three at high school special education and 24 of middle school science and social studies. I taught at Rittman Exempted Village Schools.

I am here today to share my thoughts and feelings about STRS. For many years, I believed everything that STRS told me. I trusted them and I looked forward to my retirement. Then we lost all that money in ENRON and terrible real estate purchases along with lavish spending by the staff/board. 

I went from paying 9% to 14% each paycheck. Then STRS changed our retirement from 30 and out to 35. We used to get 88% of our retirement if we worked 35 years, and 100% if we worked 38 years. Now we paid more and got less each additional year we worked. I retired in May of 2019. I was told I would receive my first COLA in June of 2022. I still have never received a COLA.

As soon as I retired, COLA was permanently suspended. I am supposed to receive my one-time COLA this June. How disappointing. Instead of tightening your belts to cut costs and restore our lost benefits, you continue to throw our money away on risky ventures. If our money had been kept in the stock market alone, we would have 90 billion more dollars than we have today. Instead, you reward the investment staff with lavish bonuses. Please stop the bonuses and put all of our money back into proven ventures.

I have worked for five years trying to get people on the board who work for us and not for hedge funds and themselves. When we finally did this we had the rug pulled out from under us. The governor asked Wade Steen to resign. When Wade refused to do this, the governor appointed his replacement (illegally) without the legislators' approval. He did this the day before Pat Davidson was elected by a landslide. How did he know Pat would win the election before the votes were counted? This whole situation seems wrong to me.

You are supposed to work for us. Please start voting like you do. No raises, no bonuses, no new hires. Cut your expenses until the teachers are back to 10%, 30 years and yearly COLAs.