Trina Kay Prufer: STRS management can DISSEMBLE all they want to…. They just can’t run away from the outcome.

From Trina Kay Prufer

October 15, 2023

Neville and STRS can’t run away from this…

STRS never addresses the fact that they made 150K teachers RELIANT on the promise of financial security (which is about 70% replacement). It is in the previous mission, vision and goals, 20 years of plan booklets, retirement estimates, letters, the ORC, and in the calculations of the actuarial payout of the plan. Nope… there is just too much evidence that the cola was guaranteed, despite the LIE that it was not. STRS causes us irreparable harm in taking away our livelihood.

Now, STRS wants to go to 100% funding, which will take another decade, putting pre-2012 retirees at about 30% monthly replacement in advanced age, without social security. There are no other teacher retirement systems, without Social Security, that have ever done this before.

This level of deviance, came out of long-term methodical planning. The 2012 “reform” legislation gave STRS power to pull all the levers… modifying/cutting the cola, extending the time actives had to work and increasing the teacher contribution to 14%. Perhaps STRS’s most controversial and destructive decision was not to grandfather in retirees who had been assured the cola was pre-funded and safe.

And then there are the sneaky changes…. not using Robert’s Rules, changing the mission statement and goals, slanting the director’s objectives in his evaluation, extending the director’s contract without full board approval, limiting board members' questions and the removal of Board member Wade Steen, which was planned far in advance. There are just so many others, including the wasteful spending, exorbitant bonuses and salaries, and the propaganda issue.

However, when it gets down to the outcomes, it’s really pretty simple:

Teachers were harmed, irreparably, in a significant way, in a well thought out, methodically implemented plan.

STRS is an outlier in this regard. It is not a legitimate retirement system as all the levers of control work against teachers’ interests. There is no oversight and its just too unregulated to be a trusted and safe financial institution. Lives have been destroyed with its extreme policies. STRS management can DISSEMBLE all they want to…. They just can’t run away from the outcome.