I say let the losers that were students of these “educators” do the calculations on their pensions, that should send the state all the way to bankruptcy.
To be fair, they have already made changes on the backs of the newer teachers.
By “they” I mean the legislator’s and the deal making teacher’s union. About three years ago they unilaterally put in place new rules that now make it where newer teachers hired since 2009 who didn’t have pensions in-place yet get neither pensions or tenure until they have been employed by the system for TEN years.
The whole issue of tenure and its rules aside, it is hardly fair to have teacher’s whose pay and districts contribute to the funds (under funded although it may be) not have any pension until a ten year cliff funding deal is in place when it was a three year rule for some participation when they took their jobs.
A thirty-two year old teacher has to hopefully wait and just blindly trust that they will keep employment with the system for ten years or they get Nothing from the pension system if they loose their job at age 41 due to cut backs or illness.
I have a lot of problems with our public schooling system in general, a lot of problems with teachers’ unions and associations, but the individual teachers I know are like any job under government control — there are a decent percentage of good people that are getting shafted.
In these systems they have a certain amount of ability to savings systems, but since there is a pension system held out as the carrot there is no matching percentage like their is in private industry which has largely abandoned the Defined Benefit Pension program.
There may be states that have made no changes, but Michigan has done some changing and that has been done on the backs of every teacher that was not vested when they changed the rules a few years ago.
They can then compete for living space with the bridge trolls.
Are the pension funds jammed into bonds and commodities like so many others? If so, that would be another impending loss.