In response to financial pressures, the New York State Assembly has created new, less-generous retirement plans for teachers. Teachers and other education employees are enrolled in one of two plans, the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York (TRS) and the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS). How far have the benefits…

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…

The reason teacher retirement benefits have been much in the news in recent years, and a topic of close attention by lawmakers and budget-watchers, is not because their existence is in dispute but because their financial underpinnings are often shaky and sometimes truly precarious. If a state or district doesn't set aside enough money now to cover…

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…

Limited information exists on how early career teachers, particularly those in "Generation Y", feel about the pension system and potential reforms to the pension system. This paper presents an analysis of the appeal of different aspects of pension plans; their influence on charter versus traditional public school teachers; and how…

Spurred by the high turnover of urban school chiefs, school boards are trying to lock in outstanding incumbents by offering "golden handcuff" provisions such as trust funds, extended contracts, and supplemental salary and housing benefits. A sidebar describes a Jackson (Mississippi) superintendent's $100,000 escrow account as a…