Oh, To Work as an Educator

[osoab]

[url=http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-thought-new-york-was-bad-check-out-the-ridiculous-public-sector-pensions-in-illinois-2010-6]
If You Thought New York Was Bad, Check Out The Ridiculous Public Sector Pensions In Illinois[url]

http://static.businessinsider.com/image/4c168dff7f8b9aaf2bb00000/pensionsillinois.jpg

Line 4, 26 million over 30 years estimated. Bet he earned it too.

[k-os]

They probably won't see any of it.

I consider teaching one of the last honest professions, and a very important profession at that. You know, I have always had pity for teachers and their low wages. If they're getting pensions like these, I am not sure what all the pity is about. They may be paid very poorly, but they will retire very well off.

[tekrunner]

We can promise whatever dollar amount you'd like for as many years as you'd like. What we can't promise is its purchasing power. - Ben Bernanke

Let those indoctrination camp guards suck air.

[osoab]

They probably won't see any of it.

I consider teaching one of the last honest professions, and a very important profession at that. You know, I have always had pity for teachers and their low wages. If they're getting pensions like these, I am not sure what all the pity is about. They may be paid very poorly, but they will retire very well off.


Think of all of those that are currently seeing it, though. Lot's of dough.

I wouldn't put teachers as one of the last honest professions. There are honest people (which is dwindeling), not professions. There are probably more delusionals in the schools than there is anywhere else. They have to preach the crap.

The worst part is that the math teachers can't work out the math.

[k-os]

I wouldn't put teachers as one of the last honest professions. There are honest people (which is dwindeling), not professions. There are probably more delusionals in the schools than there is anywhere else. They have to preach the crap.

The worst part is that the math teachers can't work out the math.


I think that most people who choose to go into teaching are decent people.

[MNeagle]

I don't believe for a minute those are teacher's salaries. They must be high-level administrators at least.

[osoab]

I don't believe for a minute those are teacher's salaries. They must be high-level administrators at least.


You are probably correct. The "superintendents" of Illinois schoold districts are paid extreme sums even at the smallest of schools.

[Ash_Williams]

I have a relative that teaches. It's a joke. A few times last winter she didn't want to drive in the snow to work, but didn't want to take a sick day either (the sick days build up forever... you can have hundreds of them saved up at retirement) so she just drove to the closest school. Turns out if she goes there, and teaches one class, she gets paid for the day. Her regular school (not closed because the snow really wasn't that bad) brought in a substitute to teach her classes. She's a ditz in general yet makes as much as most people who graduate with a real degree and actually work.

And then I sign over another check for thousands in property tax....

[Johnny Ringo]

I don't believe for a minute those are teacher's salaries. They must be high-level administrators at least.


Absolutely. The link itself points out line 4, saying the guy is an administrator. A quick Google search of the top name and school district will tell you that Mary Curley is the Superintendent of the district.

Still, that's an awful lot of money. A random sampling of the retirement to final salary shows retirement running between 61% and 68% of final salary. Keep this in mind any time you hear about a program that will throw money at one perceived education problem or another. Nearly every dime will go to a handful of schmucks appointed to "implement" and "oversee" the program. Nary a cent will directly benefit a single student.

[osoab]

I wouldn't put teachers as one of the last honest professions. There are honest people (which is dwindeling), not professions. There are probably more delusionals in the schools than there is anywhere else. They have to preach the crap.

The worst part is that the math teachers can't work out the math.


I think that most people who choose to go into teaching are decent people.


I think they have the upmost intentions. But, quite frankly, the ones I know are dumbasses.

You wouldn't use them as a body health model. They won't use the phone. Only facebook.
They like to play music to the students. Stuff the kids would never have listented to.
Well that's great and all, but does that help the cognitive abilities of the student?
To me it's akin to soothing the savage beast.

The ones with the best intentions seems to go to the early childhood area. Which is great, but the harder lessons are learned later on in life.

If you use the continually dumbing down of society as a model, the teachers are dumber, the students are affected. It's a perpetuating cycle.

I have just seen too many crappy instructors at different levels to put the whole lot in a realm of semi-reverence.

[LuckyStrike]

You know, I have always had pity for teachers and their low wages.


Low wages? In FL teaches make close to 40k starting out and only work 10 months a year considering I think that is damn good. Not to mention all their benefits.

[k-os]

You know, I have always had pity for teachers and their low wages.


Low wages? In FL teaches make close to 40k starting out and only work 10 months a year considering I think that is damn good. Not to mention all their benefits.


It's got to be different by county, NordicBerserker. I know a few teachers in FL who started out at 24K (one in Daytona, one in West Palm). Plus, they all bought school supplies themselves (because they were not adequately provided by the school system), and spent at least a couple hours a day grading papers after school. I know someone who had her masters and could only bring down 29K her first year. She works for a private school now, taking in only a few thousand more (but her kids get a discount).

You do have a point about the months off and the benefits, though.

[mamboni]

Those salaries and benefits are insane, totally inappropriate. As a physician, after 20 years experience and in private practice, at present I am contributing 10% of my gross income to my own Keough. I am in the top 1% of wage earners; nevertheless, my final pension principle will not come anywhere close to those public pension numbers, not by a country mile. So I tell you it is mathematically impossible for the public taxpayers to be able to afford these lucrative pension promises. The public is getting fiscally raped!

[willie pete]

An example from NY, but you can widen this one out to a lot of different places...

"You can retire at 44 on a $101,333 pension from a $74,000 job. If you are a public employee. Is this a great country or what?"

"Roughly 3,700 retired public workers in New York are getting pensions of more than $100,000 a year (That's $370,000,000 minimum per year). The New York Times collected this public information from the state’s two pension funds and four of the five city funds. The pension plan for the city's firefighters has yet to provide information, as required under public information laws."

In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.



Chris Maynard for The New York Times
Edward A. Stolzenberg collects $222,143 a year, one of the biggest New York State pensions.

Payback Time
Articles in this series will examine the consequences of, and attempts to deal with, growing public and private debts


Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
WORKING OVERTIME Yonkers has arranged for its police officers to put in overtime as flagmen on Consolidated Edison construction sites. Though a company is paying the bill, Yonkers is reporting the work as city overtime to the New York State pension fund, thereby increasing future payouts.

It’s what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. “I don’t understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem,” he said.

Despite a pension investigation by the New York attorney general, an audit concluding that some police officers in the city broke overtime rules to increase their payouts and the mayor’s statements that future pensions should be based on regular pay, not overtime, these practices persist in Yonkers.

The city has even arranged for its police to put in overtime as flagmen on Consolidated Edison construction sites. Though a company is paying the bill, the city is actually reporting the work as city overtime to the New York State pension fund, padding future payouts — an arrangement at odds with the spirit of public employment, if not the law.

The Yonkers experience shows how errors, misunderstandings and wishful thinking are piling hidden new costs onto New York’s public pension system every year, worsening the state’s current fiscal crisis. And the problem is not just in New York. Public pension costs are ballooning everywhere, throwing budgets out of whack and raising the question of whether venerable state pension systems are viable.

In fact, the cost of public pensions has been systemically underestimated nationwide for more than two decades, say some analysts. By these estimates, state and local officials have promised $5 trillion worth of benefits while thinking they were committing taxpayers to roughly half that amount.

The use of public money for outsize retirement pay really stings when budgets don’t balance, teachers are being laid off, furloughs are being planned and everything from poison-control centers to Alzheimer’s day care is being cut, as is happening in New York.

According to pension data collected by The New York Times from the city and state, about 3,700 retired public workers in New York are now getting pensions of more than $100,000 a year, exempt from state and local taxes. The data belie official reports that the average state pension is a modest $18,000, or $38,000 for retired police officers and firefighters. (The average is low, in part, because it includes people who worked in government only part time, or just a few years, as well as surviving spouses getting partial benefits.)

Roughly one of every 250 retired public workers in New York is collecting a six-figure pension, and that group is expected to grow rapidly in coming years, based on the number of highly paid people in the pipeline.

Payouts for Decades

Some will receive the big pensions for decades. Thirteen New York City police officers recently retired at age 40 with pensions above $100,000 a year; nine did so in their 30s. The plan’s public information officer said that the very young retirees had qualified for special disability pensions, which are 50 percent larger than ordinary police pensions. He said several dozen of the highest-paid New York City police retirees had disabilities related to 9/11 and the rest of the disabilities resulted from injuries in the line of duty.

In virtually every case, the officials who granted the rich pensions thought they were offering something affordable, because the cost estimates were too low.

Before Yonkers adopted a richer pension formula for police in 2000, for instance, it was told the maximum cost would be $1.3 million a year. But instead, the yearly cost is now $3.75 million and rising.

David Simpson, a spokesman for the mayor of Yonkers, said pension cost projections were “often lowballs,” so the city could get stuck. “Once you give something, you can’t take it away,” he said.

Police pensions and overtime have been a sore point in Yonkers for many years and were the subject of an exposé in The Journal News in Westchester in 2009. A special audit of police overtime in Yonkers in 2007 found that the police department had failed to enforce its own rules, creating pervasive opportunities for abuse.



Something closer to home:


Miami firefighters union wants court to defend its contract

Miami's firefighter union fights back against a city measure aimed at renegotiating its sweetener-laden contract.
BY CHARLES RABIN
crabin@MiamiHerald.com
Less than a week after Miami invoked an obscure state statute to try and rein in hefty firefighter salaries contributing to the city's budget mess, the union fired back, asking the court to toss the measure.

In a six page complaint filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court this week, the local chapter of the International Association of Firefighters argues that the ``financial urgency'' clause the city invoked gives too much power to a public employer.

The brief calls the statute ``vague,'' and contends it's ``subject to no objective criteria.'' It asks the court to declare it ``unenforceable.''

Late last week, Miami declared the state of financial urgency, a rare move that forces collectively bargained contracts back to the table. The statute lists no preconditions for the declaration other than ``an urgent and drastic need to begin bargaining.''

It calls for two weeks of negotiations, and orders a mediator at impasse. If that fails, Miami's five commissioners would negotiate a new contract.

The fire union argues it gave more concessions to the city last year than other unions, bypassing raises in excess of 5 percent in exchange for adding a year to its current contract.

Commission Chairman Marc Sarnoff said he is hopeful the two sides can hammer out an agreement that would benefit firefighters and give the city some relief.

``I hope everyone realizes the city is on the verge of bankruptcy. We have essentially used up our reserves,'' Sarnoff said.

While Miami isn't quite bankrupt, its reserves have plunged from a high of $141 million in 2003 to $40 million today. And if projections are accurate, the city is staring at another deficit this budget year of close to $30 million. That could leave less than $10 million in reserve.

The situation has become bleak enough that City Manager Carlos Migoya is contemplating the sale of some city assets to raise money.

Like most major cities across the nation, Miami is reeling from a plunge in property tax revenues, coupled with a union pension that is choking the city's checkbook.

LARGEST PENSION

At the end of this budget year, Miami will have to shell out more than $100 million to make the city's pensions whole. That means 20 cents of every dollar Miami takes in from property taxes goes to the retirement of city workers. Though the city has four major unions, the firefighter's pension is by far the largest obligation.

Part of the problem dates back more than 40 years, to a time when city administrators got caught using pension money to balance the books. When some firefighters caught on, they filed suit.

In 1985, the so-called ``Gates Settlement'' was reached, forcing Miami to shell out several million dollars each year for the next 27 years to make the pension whole.

The city also agreed to hefty cost of living allowances -- which administrators say are now strangling the city.

Still, three years ago commissioners approved a new contract with the fire union filled with salary sweeteners.

Today, eight of the city's 10 most highly compensated employees are firefighters.

BENEFITS

The contract includes pay for anniversary, longevity, tuition and safety shoe reimbursements. Firefighters can receive yearly salary supplements for earning degrees.

Of the city's more than 600 sworn firefighters, 19 are costing taxpayers more than $300,000 a year in compensation and benefits; another 161 are over $200,000.

[Twisted Titan]

Just give it a bit more time...........

[Johnny Ringo]

You know, I have always had pity for teachers and their low wages.


Low wages? In FL teaches make close to 40k starting out and only work 10 months a year considering I think that is damn good. Not to mention all their benefits.


It's got to be different by county, NordicBerserker. I know a few teachers in FL who started out at 24K (one in Daytona, one in West Palm). Plus, they all bought school supplies themselves (because they were not adequately provided by the school system), and spent at least a couple hours a day grading papers after school. I know someone who had her masters and could only bring down 29K her first year. She works for a private school now, taking in only a few thousand more (but her kids get a discount).

You do have a point about the months off and the benefits, though.


Exactly. My county starts at $30k. Benefits? Meh. The medical sucks so much that I use my wife's. It costs about 1/3 of the paycheck, and they fight you over every nickel when it's time for them to pay. Retirement? I'm told the state contributes 3% to my retirement fund every year - I'm in the investment system, which is a self-directed investment fund and NOT the state pension program (we choose between one or the other, and can change our minds once). After 6 years, I've got about $18k in there. I'll need Ft. Knox to store all the gold I can buy with that. The convenience store I worked for years ago had a 401k matching rate that was better than that...

Yes, places where the Teacher's Unions rule (NY, Chicago, the Northeast, for example), the teachers are living large. Not so much here. But if you want to find waste in any school system, go to the district office. There are so many people stepping over each other that they're not sure exactly what their jobs are. And most of them are making much more than a classroom teacher.

Here's a great example - teacher assistants start out here at about $18k. One of the regular workers at the district had her job eliminated, so they placed her at my school as a teacher assistant - drawing her former salary, of course. She makes more than all but the most senior (20+ years) teachers for doing very little compared to the other teacher assistants.

And if you look further, there are many federally and state-mandated programs that "create" jobs above the principal level. The politicians ensure the cycle never stops.

[LuckyStrike]

You know, I have always had pity for teachers and their low wages.


Low wages? In FL teaches make close to 40k starting out and only work 10 months a year considering I think that is damn good. Not to mention all their benefits.


It's got to be different by county, NordicBerserker. I know a few teachers in FL who started out at 24K (one in Daytona, one in West Palm). Plus, they all bought school supplies themselves (because they were not adequately provided by the school system), and spent at least a couple hours a day grading papers after school. I know someone who had her masters and could only bring down 29K her first year. She works for a private school now, taking in only a few thousand more (but her kids get a discount).

You do have a point about the months off and the benefits, though.


I reckon it does vary by county but FWIW I have 3 teachers or former teachers in my immediate family. All taught in FL for prob 40 combined years, one moved to SC and made mid 30's there back 10 years ago.

[osoab]

I'll join Gov. Christie when it comes to the pay issue.

If you don't like, do something else. We almost always have options.

I however, would not teach kids for anything less than a 100 g's a year.

Since it is unlikely I could find a teaching postition that would pay that in the 1st year,
I have other areas of interest.

[oldmansmith]

Mrs. Old is a teacher, and with 20 years of experience makes 60K plus per year here in taxachusetts . I wouldn't touch her job for twice the pay, she earns every penny. And as many have said here, the great retirement benefits (that she has been paying into) are great for those already retired. Mrs. Old is still young enough that by the time she retires she will be lucky to get anything.

[Johnny Ringo]

Mrs. Old is a teacher, and with 20 years of experience makes 60K plus per year here in taxachusetts . I wouldn't touch her job for twice the pay, she earns every penny. And as many have said here, the great retirement benefits (that she has been paying into) are great for those already retired. Mrs. Old is still young enough that by the time she retires she will be lucky to get anything.




I can empathize with Mrs. Old - and I make about 2/3 of what she does. I wasn't even going to rehash that part of the argument, so thanks for adding that. The stress is unbelievable. The crap parents put teachers through because they don't know how to hold their kids accountable is amazing.

I'm still cleaning up my classroom (during my 2-month "vacation"), and one of our students showed up with his mother. Apparently, Mom went the whole school year without knowing her son was failing THREE out of four core subjects. Let's see, instructions on how to access student grades are posted on the district website, we send home mid-term quarterly progress reports, send home report cards, and yet this woman had no clue. Mom of the freakin' year right there.

The personal attacks teachers undergo are unbelieveable. Every year, at least one teacher has a group of parents that go after him/her and do everything they can to get that teacher fired. And they're always good teachers, just with high standards. This past year, I had about 3 parents email me almost daily - as if I didn't have those other 130 students and had all the time in the world for their kid. At times, it took every ounce of restraint in my body not to write that their kid was retarded and needed to be in the retard classes and then hit the "send" button.

Add in all those wonderful programs that throw money and teacher time at the bottom 5%. Yet, they still expect us to teach the rest of the kids to a certain standard. It might happen if you forego those selfish personal activities - like sleeping. Otherwise, no.

Those summer breaks are probably the only thing keeping half the teachers in the profession.

[osoab]

I am probably being unnecessarily hard on teachers. I had many good teachers myself. I would be short changing them if I didn't state it.

From the numbers in the top post, we are really talking about the administrators. But this falls back on the local school district voters or however things work in you area. The same morons are voted in on the board and hirer the same accredited superintendents, etc. in the same postions with the exhorbent salaries.

Did anyone catch the Zero Hedge article on the State of lllinois Teachers Retirement System fund?

61% Underfunded Illinois Teachers Pension Fund Goes For Broke, Becomes Next AIG-In-Waiting By Selling Billions In CDS (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/61-underfunded-illinois-teachers-pension-fund-goes-broke-becomes-next-aig-waiting-selling-bi)

Where are the teachers in explaining a 8.5% mandated yearly return in their fund?
This number is unstainable in and of itslelf.

Are the top echelons in the union so engrained into the structure that they can never be removed? Never to be questioned.

I have no idea. I would never join a union. My employment is between me and my employer.


The teachers’ fund denies it’s currently losing money on its derivatives, and in a statement said its investment strategy, which has included OTC derivatives for the past 27 years, is up 9.7 percent during that same time period. That’s better than the fund’s 8.5 percent target return rate. Further, a TRS spokesman said derivatives represented just 2 percent of the $4.4 billion fiscal 2009 loss.

Illinois pension fund uses OTC derivatives to recoup returns, jeopardizes pensions (http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=166746)

I will have to read more into this article. I think Zero Hedge used some of this.

[Johnny Ringo]

Thanks for at least being willing to listen, Osoab. Public education is such a mess and a farce, and everybody knows it. But who's to blame? And there you've scored a bullseye - it's primarily the politicians and the morons that elect them that are to blame. Students are just $$ signs to the politicians and the administrators. While they care about "graduation rates," - only because the have to, they don't care about how much a student actually learns. As long as they keep their fat paychecks, that's all that matters.

Yeah, the Illinois pension article is a real eye-opener. My broker even sent me the article in his daily emailing (he works for Price Group in Chicago.) People are apparently still living in the 80s and 90s when you could throw a dart blindfolded at the stock quotes in the newspaper, put all your money into that company, and make 15%. They act as if that "safe" 8% return is there for anybody who wants it.

As you mentioned in the OP and Mamboni (and others) reinforced, the math doesn't work. These pensions aren't sustainable. Sad thing is, these people could still take a 50% haircut on these pensions and still make twice or three times what my old lady and I do working for a living.

[striped_bear]

Public education sucks.

I'm working hard now to prepare for a future where I can homeschool my children with my wife.