Mary Gierhart's speech to STRS board 9/18/2025

STRS Public Participation

9/18/2025

Hello. My name is Mary Gierhart, and I am a retired school psychologist. I worked in Delaware City Schools and then the Olentangy Local School District during my career in central Ohio. I also consulted as a school psychologist for eight years in a central Ohio charter school after my retirement. I am speaking out today because I am very upset and fearful with chronic feelings of frustration and anger. As a psychologist I know it is not healthy to keep these negative feelings inside. OUR pension needs to be restored. STRS is not in chaos or turmoil because of its members.

I’m upset because it seems like very few people really care about what is happening to the members of STRS. The general public, our legislators, the STRS staff, the ORSC, our union, and even some board members seem to believe all is well with our retirement system.  However, all is not well. It is very difficult for members to plan for retirement due to the changing rules regarding needed years of service and lack of our guaranteed COLA.  How would you feel if you retired and then one day, seemingly out of the blue, you got a letter from Social Security or OPERS stating that you would not be getting a COLA that year, or for five years, or for an unknown number of years?  How would you feel if you were an 85-year-old retired teacher and you were in poverty, really needing that COLA to help pay your bills or get your medicine? I fear that that could be me and many others in the future since no COLA means a fixed income with yearly rising prices and inflation. And do not blame teachers for not planning for the future. Many members have planned well, but many others have had life situations that have impacted their savings and/or investment opportunities such as a death of a spouse, working in a poorer school district, rising inflation, and many other unseen circumstances.

I am frustrated and angry with the feeling that we have been misled and even lied to.  I understand that the solvency of the pension is the primary focus. However, I feel like we are constantly being thrown under the bus by our legislators and investment staff with no one at STRS, the ORSC, some of the STRS board, or our union going to bat for us. Would you not be angry, upset and frustrated with the following occurrences?

    1. Loss of a written guaranteed 3% COLA and increase in the number of years required for unreduced retirement. A current preliminary Global Governance Advisors (GCA) guiding principles goal for retirees is staying informed about health care and COLA changes. The goal of STRS should be reinstating the COLA! Any life coach knows if you write your goals down on paper, they are more apt to be successfully attained.

    2. Town hall meetings not addressing members’ concerns but spewing questionable information about the premier retirement system.

    3. Loss of a half of a billion dollars from an investment in Panda Power Funds, and then not disclosing the loss for quite some time.

    4. Hiring and paying two consulting companies to advise our investment staff. Why then do we have so many investment staff on payroll?

    5. Investing in private equities with high fees, illiquidity, and lack of transparency.  I believe the private equity firms even got our board to sign off on allowing the fees to remain secret.

    6. Noncompliance with the court order for transparency, also related to number 5 above.

    7. Lack of a fiduciary focus on the members when staff bonuses are given even during years of poor investment outcomes (see #3 above.)

    8. Extravagant staff perks while members are hurting.

    9. The governor illegally removing an appointed member from the board, requiring a lawsuit, ultimately ending up in reinstatement.

    10.  In the middle of the night, passing the Ohio budget with changes to the STRS board (possibly illegally) after members had voted in a majority of reform/restore candidates. The new board will be mostly politically appointed people.

    11. Singling out only STRS for legislative changes to the board.

I could go on and on, but my time is waning. How can STRS allay my fears and gain my confidence? Try addressing some of the above concerns.