Greetings ORTA Members!
As we ring in the New Year, we look forward to strengthening our organization and doing everything possible to restore lost benefits.
ORTA’s membership reaches all 88 counties in Ohio, and 32 chapters have websites. If your chapter doesn’t have an active website and you want to start one, please get in touch with the ORTA office.
I want to share that Executive Director Dr. Robin Rayfield and I began the year meeting with three STRS Board members and STRS Interim Executive Director Aaron Hood this January at the invitation of one of the board members. The purpose was to start a dialogue between ORTA, the Board, and STRS. Robin and I appreciated the invitation and felt the meeting was an encouraging way to start the year.
To summarize, STRS, solely represented by Interim Executive Director Aaron Hood, was concerned about the criticism of STRS on social media. He wanted to emphasize that he felt the investment staff was doing a great job and impress upon everybody that investments in private equities need to be a part of the investment portfolio. ORTA noted that investing in private equities was a red flag that experts in the field, such as Richard Ennis, would warn against.
During the meeting, ORTA reinforced that our goal was to ensure that STRS worked in the membership’s best interest. ORTA also shared that some of STRS’s criticism directed at ORTA by STRS staff was often erroneously attributed to ORTA. It frequently came from other media sources. We all agreed that better communication was needed. A significant part of the meeting centered on transparency, investment portfolio allocation of assets, and the accounting for fees and investment expenses. Our board members directed excellent questions to Aaron Hood, and there was a good discussion. The meeting was productive.
Everyone agreed that the Ohio Legislature needed to pay attention to how our pension is being funded. We also concluded that since Ohio is rumored to be cutting funding for education, the task ahead will require work.
Below is a summary of the problem.
Our pension pays out about $7.5 billion in benefits annually. Roughly, the monies to pay the benefits come as $3.75 billion from employee and employer contributions and $3.75 billion from investments. Ohio is an outlier in how little the State (employer contributions) contributes to the teacher pension plan. While the Employer Contribution rate in Ohio is 14%, a comparable employer rate in other non-Social-Security states is approximately 28%. This is why there is a movement for the Ohio Legislature to raise the Ohio STRS Employer rate to at least 18%. The STRS actuaries must be able to project monies for benefits, like a COLA. Everyone at the January meeting believes the Legislature needs to address this problem. Here is one of the obstacles.
Ohio Speaker of the House Matt Huffman has indicated he wants to cut $650 million from the education budget. This is after nearly one billion dollars were allocated to Ohio’s EdChoice for vouchers, which is included in the total education budget of almost $13 billion.
Vouchers were first introduced in Ohio in the early/mid-1990s. The advocates of parochial schools were the early pioneers. It’s worth noting that reportedly half of Ohio’s Senators are Catholic. (see the article: On a Mission From God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools).
In 2013, vouchers in Ohio were limited to families at the poverty line and up to double the poverty line. Over the years, the Ohio Legislature has allowed this line to grow to 450% of the poverty line. Now, a voucher in Ohio allows families $8,407 for grades 9-12 and $6,164 for grades K-8. Families making over a million dollars annually qualify for at least 10% of a voucher. In a Cleveland News 5 report, Dan Heintz, a Cleveland University Heights School Board Member, shared that schools in his district receive $2,800 from the state to educate a student. But here is the disconnect: if a student leaves, they can receive an EdChoice voucher from the state and apply up to $8,407 towards shopping for another school. It is easy to see why educational funding in Ohio is controversial and how hard it will be to get Ohio Legislators to pay attention to our lack of a COLA. It will take all of us working together to resolve this problem. ORTA will increasingly communicate with Ohio’s legislators as 2026 is an election year.
Speaking of elections…
ORTA (and OFT) have endorsed the same STRS board candidates for this Spring’s STRS election. Three seats are up for grabs: one retiree seat and two active seats. ORTA has endorsed Rudy Fichtenbaum (retiree seat), incumbent Michael Harkness (active seat), and Chad Smith (active seat).
Let’s do what we can to keep moving forward and restoring our lost benefits.
Dean Dennis Executive Committee Chair
Dean Dennis' message was included in ORTA's Biannual Newsletter, which was sent to members via the USPS. Join ORTA to receive a full color, hard copy of our biannual newsletters!
STRS Ohio Board member Rudy Fichtenbaum, and former Board member Wade Steen, are incurring legal fees, defending themselves against the lawsuit brought against them by A.G. Dave Yost. ORTA will use donations from the Pension Defense Fund to help them, if needed, pay their legal expenses. They have volunteered their time to support Ohio's teachers. Now it's time for us to show our support for them! Make a donation today to the ORTA Pension Defense Fund