Retired Teachers Have EARNED Pensions
from the 2009 ORTA Winter Quarterly (over one year ago)
 by Tom Seamon, ORTA Quarterly Editor

Retired teachers do many things well, one of which is making their communities better places to live. They do this by volunteering their time and expertise at hospitals, nursing homes, schools, blood banks, shelters, and missions.

They visit the sick, feed the poor, read to the children, give blood, author books, provide leadership, act as docents, and serve in advisory capacities,  Before that, they spent the better part of their lives teaching the youth of their community to be competent and productive citizens. They complete their tasks unselfishly.

As a retired teacher you know you did not teach “for the money,” because you could have earned more in the private sector had not “teaching” been important to you. 

Yet, every so often, we read an editorial or hear from someone in the private sector complaining about “taxpayer-funded” pensions that teachers are receiving. There is a misconception among some people that the Treasurer of the State of Ohio is actually depositing money, in the form of pensions, into our bank accounts.  Not so!

What is true is that the money we received while we were employed was paid with taxpayer dollars. That is universal! That is the way every public school system in the nation works. But what happens next is what makes all the difference: A certain percentage of the money we made was put into an investment account at STRS. Our employer contributed a percentage of our pay to that account as well. STRS investment experts invested that money in various ways.

In retirement, we are receiving our money back - with interest!  Of the money that we receive each month, about 70 to 80% of it is interest earned on the money that STRS has invested for us. To be perfectly accurate, taxpayers did fund our work as active teachers. However, the money that pays us now was set aside during our working years, so when we retired, the pension money was there and paid for. There are NO TAXPAYER DOLLARS needed to pay Ohio retired teacher pensions. They were funded by teachers and their employers before retirement. -ED.