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The Teacher Retirement System’s Real Problem: Defined Benefit Pension Plans
The Houston Courant ^ | March 3, 2020 | J. Quintero

Posted on 03/10/2020 4:27:47 AM PDT by The Houston Courant

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To: The Houston Courant

$3,912,000 per year.

OUTRAGEOUS


21 posted on 03/10/2020 7:23:21 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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To: The Houston Courant

Here’s the genius running the Texas TRS:

Brian Guthrie

https://www.txdirectory.com/online/person/?id=27025&staff=5924


22 posted on 03/10/2020 7:27:42 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: Rummyfan
We spend so much money on education yet the schools are producing graduates who are functionally illiterate.

Last Friday, I interviewed for an accounting job at an investment management company. I'm retired, but I like staying active, and I'd rather do that than teach.

Their assessment test included a lot of basic math, calculators not allowed. Obviously, that gave me a great advantage over the 20-30 somethings who applied. In fact, the owner told me I scored the highest he'd ever seen.

I'm not expecting to be hired, but it felt good to know I still have it.

It's nearly fifty years since I graduated from HS, when California schools were excellent.

23 posted on 03/10/2020 7:31:40 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Gonzales! Come and Take It!)
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To: Night Hides Not
when California schools were excellent.

Living in Ohio, I was always impressed with my California cousins when we visited. This was back in the late 50s, early 60s.

24 posted on 03/10/2020 7:35:15 AM PDT by nascarnation
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To: Rummyfan

“We spend so much money on education yet the schools are producing graduates who are functionally illiterate. Where does all the money go?”


You ask a question whose answer is too complex to completely answer, but I’ll give it a shot. I retired from teaching 8 years ago. I still sub at the school where I spent most of my career. Semi-rural school, non union.

When I started teaching there, there was 1 teacher for each grade K-8. An art/speech teacher, a coach, a music teacher/aide a librarian, and a special ed teacher. Administration was one superintendent/principal and the school secretary. We had a janitor, three cooks (who actually cooked) and 5 bus drivers. Classes were large—my first class was 35 seventh graders who I taught all day.

Thirty-five years later with smaller enrollment, all but two grades have two teachers each. There is a full-time school nurse, a full time bookkeeper, a superintendent and a principal, a resource officer, a curriculum director, full time music and art teachers, full-time speech teacher, two computer teachers, a counsellor, at least three full-time special ed. teachers and with aides for each, two full-time teachers for at-risk students who don’t qualify for special ed. There are at least two special needs children who require full-time aides to stay with them, maybe three janitors, and the same number of cooks (who now reheat/thaw) and bus drivers. I’m sure I’ve missed some.

And, at the end of the day, the kids now are not getting the quality of education, for the most part, that they did when I started. More kids come to school on their first day broken or severely neglected. Many parents, for whatever reason, are not interested or concerned about their children’s education or future. Asking some to even take care of feeding their kids is apparently asking too much.

It is very frustrating.


25 posted on 03/10/2020 7:56:24 AM PDT by hanamizu
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To: The Houston Courant

This article is really about divine contribution plan versus 401k retirement plan.
There are some people in Houston fighting to change the retirement plan for Texas teachers from the plan we now have.


26 posted on 03/10/2020 8:02:30 AM PDT by Cottonpatch
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To: nascarnation
To put it in perspective, most of my classmates and I were testing at 12th grade reading levels in sixth grade. One of the books we read together as a class was The Count of Monte Cristo.

In 4th grade, we had a daily vocabulary exercise where we'd write that week's 20 words five times. By the end of the year, we had 600-700 words in our vocabulary that you couldn't help but spell correctly.

That style of rote learning, like multiplication tables, is sneered at today.

27 posted on 03/10/2020 8:09:52 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Gonzales! Come and Take It!)
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To: Reily

No offense or anything, but you don’t have a clue.


28 posted on 03/10/2020 8:37:25 AM PDT by odawg (ANo)
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To: odawg

I don’t?
Explain why I don’t !
Also your explanation can’t use the term “Secular Humanism”.


29 posted on 03/10/2020 8:46:16 AM PDT by Reily
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To: Reily

“Also your explanation can’t use the term “Secular Humanism”.”

Well, yeah, it has everything to do with it.

Look up Frankfurt School.

I have many relatives in education and have worked closely with educators. School unions are not even mentioned, and here in Louisiana are only liability insurance programs.

Bobby Jindal destroyed teaching in Louisiana and the teacher unions never said a word of protest.

The fifty state educational bureaucracies are hard Leftists in all the states and are not even unionized. Ditto the textbook companies whose writers create the anti-American textbooks. Nor the Leftists testing companies who write the tests that are given in all the schools.


30 posted on 03/10/2020 9:09:40 AM PDT by odawg (ANo)
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To: odawg

In WV the teachers union has taken its cue form the UMW.
They’ll even turn the kids out that are in college out to strike\demonstrate if they have an issue they really want the PR optics. Bills to allow engineers\scientists to change careers and enter teaching, Ed School colleges kids strike! Bills to tighten requirements, union jumps on it. I could go on. Benefits & pay (already more then the average WV family!), any bills to reign that in, teachers unions get to work. In the southern part of the state where UMW militancy is the strongest, the teachers union use UMW tactics property damage, physical threats, etc.

yeah I don’t know nuthin!


31 posted on 03/10/2020 9:18:59 AM PDT by Reily
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To: Reily

“yeah I don’t know nuthin!”

That is about the size of it. In Texas, and especially, here in Louisiana, where teacher unions are toothless, we have the same Leftist anti-American propaganda taught in the public schools here as they do in the North where the unions are much stronger.

I talked with a teacher in Texas who was lamenting the powerlessness of the teachers’ unions in Texas. She said the administration in Illinois where she use to teach hated her because she was a union representative and could force her will. There controversies were never about the curriculum. They couldn’t care less.


32 posted on 03/10/2020 10:37:43 AM PDT by odawg (ANo)
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To: odawg

maybe where you are!

Where I am I have family & friends in education also.
That’s not their complaint, it’s the union. Fro example the union controls the school boards because only union approved candidates win.


33 posted on 03/10/2020 10:41:56 AM PDT by Reily
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To: The Houston Courant

THE CYCLE OF PUBLIC UNION CORRUPTION

1. Unions charge dues and set aside part for political causes (lobbying for benefits and pay.)

2. Legislators and governors have to approve and negotiate contracts with public unions.

3. The union bribes (contributes to campaigns and does separate TV ads) the officials (legislatures and governor), who supposedly are management and represent the taxpayers.

4. The legislature and governors approve higher pay and benefits.

5. Unions increase dues because members who will make an extra 400 a month don’t mind a extra 50 a month to the union.

6. The unions increase the bribes to get more pay and benefits..

RINSE AND REPEAT.


34 posted on 03/10/2020 10:51:03 AM PDT by stuckincali
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To: Reily

“maybe where you are!”

That is my point. The original discussion was the cause of the pathetic state of public education. My point is that where unions are powerless, we still have the same anti-American textbooks, the same anti-American propaganda in all sources of information. That is why I stated that if all teacher unions disappeared overnight, nothing would change.


35 posted on 03/10/2020 11:36:11 AM PDT by odawg (ANo)
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To: odawg

In my state it would completely change!


36 posted on 03/10/2020 11:39:59 AM PDT by Reily
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To: The Houston Courant

NYS has a HUGE building: https://images.app.goo.gl/7XmFZ7f6wkADAjXc6


37 posted on 03/10/2020 11:45:55 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: odawg

That is why I stated that if all teacher unions disappeared overnight, nothing would change.


You may not agree with me but school boards wanted unions also. it is much easier to deal with one entity than multiple individuals.


38 posted on 03/10/2020 11:58:13 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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