Trina Prufer’s speech to STRS board 9/18/2025

My name is Trina Prufer. I am a retired school psychologist and my late husband was a college professor. Between us, our careers in public education spanned 70 years. Today I thought I would read a somewhat edited version of a post I wrote a few years ago after having watched my first STRS board meeting. The title of my talk is: “The Tyranny of the Bar Graph”

I watched some but not all of the proceedings yesterday. Missing from the presentations were discussions on the long term effects of STRS policies on retirees, which a decade ago sacrificed retirees’ financial security to the altar of the “unfunded liability”. What happens to retirees in the future is apparently of no concern. We are just the unfortunate casualties of the bar graph, which projects how well STRS will be doing in 10 years.

The reality is that there are 500 thousand members of STRS, and no other teacher retirement system in the nation has harmed its constituency to this degree. You would never know that by listening to the speakers.

Because we are invisible and left out of the discourse, there is no urgency to find equity for members. STRS has been defining the COLA as an “enhancement” . That is exactly the problem. Instead of facing the issue, its name was changed. Now that was simple.. all done, no problem anymore. Why aren’t teachers grateful when a 1% COLA is bestowed on them?

STRS, the system, conveys denial, disinformation and nonsense: Examples include:  “the COLA was never guaranteed” “STRS is a premier retirement system” and “membership is satisfied with the performance of STRS”. Instead of acknowledging that retirees are heading off a financial cliff,  STRS produces FLUFF …and lots of it.

STRS is a failure, not because it was 49% underfunded a decade ago. It is a failure because there is no moral core to the institution itself. There are no long term solutions for sustainability other than harming teachers. It is not fighting FOR US… it is fighting FOR US to take the financial hit of past institutional mistakes, with a dose of profiteering on the side. To the victor belong the spoils. That is exactly what  “reform” legislation was designed to do.

The success of a retirement system is not measured by a column on a bar graph, but by the quality of the lives of its retirees. Using this standard, how well is STRS doing?