A message from new ORTA president, Dean Dennis

From ORTA Newsletter

August 2023

Greetings ORTA Members,

As your new President, I am grateful to the leadership of the Presidents before me, namely Bee Lehner, Kara Mendenhall and Chris DeMarco. I also want to acknowledge Robin Rayfield, ORTA's Executive Director, and Mia Landrum ORTA's Office Manager, who work tireless for our organization. My involved with this group of individuals has led me to my commitment to help ORTA with its mission to make our pension system more effective for Ohio's educators. I believe that ORTA's advocacy and monitoring of our pension plan will make a difference.

ORTA members, thank you for supporting our 76 year old organization and for your dedication to the teaching profession. Please know the ORTA office depends on the leadership, compassion and camaraderie found in ORTA's five regions and their local chapters.

Some background about myself. Both of my parents were the first in their family to go to college, both went into education and both drew their pensions from STRS. My dad grew up in rural New Holland, Ohio, and retired as a principal from the St. Bernard School District in Ohio. My mom grew up in Cincinnati and retired as a math teacher from the Finneytown School District. She also served as the local Finneytown Education Association (FEA) President. As a child, the first acronym I knew was "STRS" as my parents often talked shop at the dinner table. Growing up, my brother and I knew teachers didn't get rich. But we knew it was an honorable profession. In addition to teaching, I remember my mom taught sewing on the side and my dad painted houses. Our parents taught us that life was what you made of it.

I graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a Psychology degree and shortly thereafter obtained a Masters degree in Education. Armed with a degree I could actually use, I launched a 35 year career with The Cincinnati Public Schools. I began by career by teaching severe behavioral handicapped children.

Eventually, I became one of the first out of classroom Lead Teachers for the Cincinnati School district and oversaw the district's School Social Work Department. In between serving in this position, I served 10 years in the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers (CFT) office as a Field Representative. These duties included enforcing the Collective Bargaining Agreement and working with the district's CFT Building Representatives. When I retired in 2008, I was overseeing the School Social Worker Department again and serving as the district's court liaison. I also was serving as a CFT Vice President.

In 2010, I became aware of the planned Draconian cuts that STRS was going to present before the Ohio Legislature. Like many of you, I felt the changes were unfair for both active teachers and retirees.

However, what I really wanted to know is, how and why did this happen? I started attending the STRS Board meetings with Bob Buerkle, former CFT Retirement Chair, to listen for an explanation that made sense. There really weren't any good answers. Often I would sign up to speak to offer ideas or express my displeasure. I felt no one was listening and STRS management and the majority of our Board were modeling the definition of the word "inertia."

It was while attending these meetings, I got to observe Dr. Robin Rayfield representing ORTA. He would also address the STRS Board. Meeting after meeting Robin would ask the STRS, "what is your plan to restore benefits?" Robin was always polite but persistent. When he'd sit back down, on occasion, I'd walk behind him and say, "they aren't going to answer you, they don't have a plan."

But STRS did have a "plan." It was what they did. They simply cut and withheld benefits to compensate for their subpar investment practices that weren't able to keep pace with the payouts members were promised or expecting. My thoughts were, not paying what were once promised obligations isn't a plan, it's a failure.

The current problems at STRS are three-fold: 

1) The Employer Contribution rate has been locked at 14% for 40 years and they haven't made any lobbying efforts to increase the contribution rate.

2) STRS is actively managing their investments and continues to move more and more into risky Alternative Investments. These investments have too many non-disclosure agreements and hidden fees. Briefly, Alternative Investments are investments in which STRS is a Limited Partner but the monies are controlled by the General Partners. STRS cannot audit the value of these investments. It is questionable under Ohio Code 3307.15 whether these investments are even legal. STRS has approximately $20 billion in these investments.

3) STRS is dogmatic that their active investments outperform passive Index Investing practices. STRS states their case in the face of overwhelming evidence that demonstrates it doesn't. You may have read some articles written by Board Member Dr. Fichtenbaum and national investment expert Richard Ennis who challenge STRS over this issue. To form your own opinion, type into a Google Search, "How often do investment firms beat the market?" Keep in mind after your research that STRS earns their bonuses for beating their Benchmarks (which are tied to the market) 100% of the time.

So, here are my goals.

 1) Increase Awareness, Increase Membership. We need to focus on making sure our pension system works for all members. Other teacher state pension plans don't require working 34 years; most also have an inflation formula for making sure once retired, your pension isn't stagnant.

We need to move towards a goal of reduction in years required for full pension benefits which includes a COLA that protects a member's purchasing power. We will offer membership to active and retired teachers and let them know that our focus is to make sure STRS is maximizing contribution dollars and not wasting their dollars on hidden fees, non disclosure agreements and investments that cannot be independently audited.

2) Elect Board Members who share our goals of transparent investment practices and will question STRS spending practices that don't benefit members. We need Board Members who demand transparent investments and who are open to exploring to new investment approaches. We need Board Members who direct STRS Lobbyist to work for members.

3) Lobby the Legislature to increase the Employer Contribution. The STRS Employer Contribution has been at 14% for 40 years. Meanwhile, other non social security states like Ohio average around 23% for their Employer Contribution. The $3 billion gap between the STRS monies collected annually in contributions and the payout obligations to members is unacceptable. ORTA needs to take a leadership role in lobbying the legislature to increase the Employer Contribution. This is critical in order to restore what has been taken away from us.

Let's continue our momentum. See if each of you can recruit one person to become an ORTA member and start visiting our new website for updated information. 

My Best,

Dean Dennis