Does STRS have a Humanitarian Purpose?
STRS was founded in 1919 to provide teachers with a secure and dignified retirement as compensation for their dedication to Ohio’s children. Ohio could be proud in that it was one of the first in the nation to have created an actuarially sound pension system PROTECTING its teachers from poverty.
The very CORE of the financial model was the pre-funding of the benefit, so there was NO RISK to members. A promise made was a promise kept… that was until 2012, when “ reform” legislation passed, turning the original funding model upside down.
Today, STRS is the WORST example of what happens when a public retirement system goes bad. From a humanitarian perspective, hard working public servants, who were promised retirement security throughout the lifespan, were double-crossed. Ohio’s retirees, survivors and the disabled were left with a benefit that significantly diminishes over time; additionally, Ohio’s active teachers pay more into the system than the defined-benefit is worth. In effect, the system eats its own.
So, what is the humanitarian purpose of STRS? Does it have any benefit to society? What happens to a cohort of aging public teachers when they are cheated by their own government?
The truth is… STRS is a detriment to its members and a cautionary tale to all other public workers and pension systems in the nation. The State of Ohio needs to face this reality and rectify the injustice. Disseminating disinformation to the media, filing phony lawsuits and changing the composition of the board only intensifies the problem. A public pension system is only as strong as the laws protecting its members. Otherwise, it just turns into a scam.
