Teachers' revolving door
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1 Comment [ View ]On these opinion pages, it's not uncommon to see letters to the editor decrying the fact that teachers are paid salaries that are a fraction of what professional athletes and their coaches make.
And while that's true, there's an important distinction to be made: Those athletes make their deals in the private sector business world, while teachers are paid from taxes levied on all of us. That doesn't mean teachers are worth less than athletes -- only that they are paid less.
The fact that teachers don't snag those eye-popping multimillion-dollar contracts is surely part of the reason there are about 30,000 ex-teachers living in Utah who are both under the age of 65 and have allowed their teaching licenses to expire. They are not teaching, even though Utah is experiencing a teacher shortage.
Rep. Rhonda Menlove, R-Garland, is sponsoring a bill she hopes will lure some of those teachers back onto the active roster. One of the significant obstacles, she says, is that teachers have to amass a couple hundred license points to be re-certified, and that takes not only money but time. Her legislation, House Bill 68, would have the state pick up the tab for relicensure and allow the teacher to negotiate with a school principal to decide what remedial studies are needed to re-enter the ranks of Utah teachers.
HB 68, which already passed the House overwhelmingly, now awaits action in Senate. We hope that body views it favorably, as well. In most cases, these former teachers will be well-suited to return to the classroom.
But we're not so sure about House Bill 96. Its goal is to attract retired teachers back to classrooms, too, but in an entirely different manner. Currently, Utah law requires a six-month period between the time a teacher retires and re-employment as a teacher in the state.
Furthermore, current law bars a teacher from retiring from a given school district, then six months later hiring back on as a teacher in that same district.
HB 96 would eliminate both the six-month waiting period and the restriction against retiring from and returning to work in the same district -- which would essentially allow a teacher to more easily double-dip.
As we've written before in this space, teachers who retire and are re-hired, albeit in another district, have a sweet deal: drawing that retirement pay and a full-time paycheck at the same time. It's bureaucratic manipulation that strikes some people as inappropriate. That's because almost no workers in the private sector get such a break. They work until age 65 or 70, and most defined-benefit retirement plans for private sector workers have gone the way of the dinosaurs.
This double-dipping is not practiced only in education -- the same thing happens in law enforcement and other departments of government. It's commonplace. HB 96 would streamline it, making it even more attractive for teachers to retire and rehire at the same school in the blink of an eye -- almost doubling their pay in the process.
We think teachers ought to make a decent living. But when we're talking about close to doubling the pay, along with the generous insurance benefits provided after retirement, it's a very good living, indeed.
We've written this before, but it bears repeating: Retirement used to mean you don't do that job anymore. If you return to doing it, or working for the same employer -- in this case, the state -- it's worth asking whether those retirement earnings should be suspended. At least we ought to have that discussion within the context of teacher shortages and overall state government funding.
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Teachers in the private sector (private schools) usually make less than teachers at public schools.
Teachers have a good deal re retirement pensions as things go these days. I am near retirement, but I think it immoral for anyone working in the public sector to take advantage of the 'double dipping' possibilities mentioned.