Teachers and other employees of the School District of Philadelphia receive their retirement benefits from the Pennsylvania state retirement plan for schools, which includes both a defined-benefit pension plan and a modest retiree health benefit. The cost of the former is expected to rise quite substantially and, as this technical analysis will…

At first glance, the recent teacher-retirement reforms in Ohio seem to bring good fiscal news to school systems in the Buckeye State. With Senate Bills 341 and 342--and a series of cutbacks on retiree healthcare--the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is projected to spend less on retirement costs in 2020 than it does today. But these reforms…

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) faced a dramatic and painful increase in employee retirement costs, driven primarily by a sharp rise in the bill for retiree health insurance, a program covered by collective-bargaining agreements between the district and its unions. In March 2011, Governor Scott Walker signed into law the Wisconsin Budget Repair…