<p>The difference is that your taxes actually go in some way to your retirement. Mine do not. I pay real estate taxes to fund others pensions, and I also pay state taxes to allow the state to fund others pensions.</p>
<p>In my state, teachers are part of a state pension plan. Any SS benefits they have earned before becoming teachers are offset. This means that for the first 10 years after a person enters teaching after having a different career, they are actually LOSING net retirement benefits.</p>
<p>These pensions cannot go on forever- it only a mater if they are phased out in a controlled way or violently in a bankruptcy court like in Detroit. </p>
<p>How many municipalities in NYS are under a control board?</p>
<p>@Limewine - On Long Island they are lining up to be teachers. In our SD, and it’s true for ALL of our neighboring districts, a single open position will attract thousands of applicants, not hundreds, thousands.</p>
<p>Why is it “teacher bashing” when the fiscal reasonableness of a pension plan is questioned? I for one don’t understand why I am paying for the retirement of anyone but myself, especially individuals who make as much as myself and more, it’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>I deliberately moved to a town with very high property taxes and an exceptionally good school system. </p>
<p>Of all the graft and waste and takers in the retirement system? I’d say that the LEAST problem is people like teachers, police officers, and other first responders. Their bosses, who never see a classroom, a crime victim, or a burning building? They are the ones taking the big checks. Complain about them and be grateful for the rest.</p>
<p>My kids have expressed interest in teaching and from everything I hear, it is very hard to get a teaching job, even in less desirable school districts. Please correct me if I’m wrong, or let me know where the jobs are, they don’t want to do TFA though.
I don’t begrudge teachers their salaries or pensions, but the administrator salaries are ridiculous. Also, some of us make the same or less than teachers so it’s not like it’s not seen as a solid, if not well-paid job. It can be very tough work I’m sure but so can a lot of jobs.</p>
<p>@BossyMommy - Again I can only speak about SDs on Long Island but a casual perusal of any SD budget will indicate teacher pensions and benefits (not superintendents) are easily 25-30% of the budget and growing rapidly (last year > 15%). The teacher’s union is following the same recipe that the cop’s union started twenty years ago - keep the budget growing and reduce the size of the workforce if necessary enabling a bigger slice of the pie for the remaining members. In NY there are a number of supportive legislation preventing the tax payer from having any control over the school budget.
In Nassau County the number of cops is down 40% from 25 years back yet the budget has more than tripled resulting in beat cops making north of $150k and barely working 200 days a year. This is where we are going with teacher’s with the result of much larger classroom sizes.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood why public pension amounts are equivalent to full-time pay. It seems to me they should be less, since retirement years involve fewer expenses: the house is paid off, the kids gone, senior discounts (:)) etc. Most people expect to spend less in retirement years, don’t they? Continuing to pay full-time salary seems excessive.</p>
<p>Basing pension on high 3 years of base pay = fair
Basing pension on high 3 years of base plus overtime and extra duties = BS</p>
<p>It’s a well-known abuse of the rules that when you get close to retirement, sympathetic supervisors will allow you to pile on the overtime and extra duties to boost your retirement pay. The problem with that is, unlike the base pay, you haven’t often contributed over the years to the retirement system enough to make that fiscally responsible. </p>
<p>If you want to include overtime and extra duties in the retirement amount, you need to average that part of it over a longer period of time, say 10 years, so that there’s no temptation to tack it all on at the end just to boost the retirement package. A guy who’s coached football for 25 years should be treated differently than some guy who got a cushy assistant coach position for the last three years of his teaching career before passing it on to the next upcoming retiree.</p>
<p>If I lived in your state I would be paying for ALL KINDS OF THINGS you might use that I don’t–the road out to your neighborhood, tax breaks for your business, etc. etc. </p>
<p>You may not have directly “used” the teachers who are now receiving their EARNED pension benefits (which are essentially deferred compensation) but they were there for you–for as many children as you may have had–just as roads, utility networks, etc. are there whether you use them or not.</p>
<p>I can only speak for NJ, but public pensions are not equal to regular pay. My mom worked for the civil service for 25 years. Her pension was calculated as the average of her last three years of work multiplied by the number of years she worked over sixty. (25/60.) So her pension was a little less than half what she made in her highest years. I believe it’s around 28k.</p>
<p>That’s the multiplier Thumper mentioned upthread. I have never heard of a public pension plan that didn’t include one.</p>
<p>I know my H’s teacher plan includes one too, but I don’t recall the denominator. It was something similar. He got into teaching late, so any pension he’ll get will be very small (if he stays long enough to get one.) He pays a substantial amount into it each pay check.</p>
<p>“I’ve never understood why public pension amounts are equivalent to full-time pay.”</p>
<p>Most aren’t equivalent to what the person was earning while they were working. </p>
<p>Also, not all people who are public servants are eligible for overtime. My H has been in gov’t for 23 years and has never received overtime - even though his normal day is 10+ hours and there has been times where he has worked 24/7 for weeks and weeks on end (the last time before, during and after Hurricane Sandy.)</p>
<p>Oops, sorry you’re right, I skipped over that for some reason. (Math word problems make my eyes glaze over lol). I must admit I always “hear” that public pensions are based on the three highest salary years, or something like that. The multiplier doesn’t seem to make it into newspaper stories, I guess.</p>
<p>In NY public employees have their own unions and have negotiated their own retirement benefits, each negotiation phase is typically called a tier. Such as Tier 6 is the latest retirement plan for new teachers and state police. For Tier 6 teachers they can receive benefits after 10 years of service at 1.67% per year for service less than 20 years and 2% every year thereafter. Tier 6 state police need to contribute into the pension fund at an average of about 4% of their gross with a max of 75% of the last five years average salary.</p>
<p>All in all pretty good pension packages with the majority of the funds originating from yours truly the taxpayer.</p>