Editor, The News:
The plan to reduce costs in public education as reported includes two parts.
1) Early retirement with a premium incentive for those who retire and 2) hire recent graduates. The intent is to lower costs, but does it actually lower costs or just shift them to somewhere or someone else?
The teacher retirement fund is supported by payments made by school districts, which receive their money from the taxpayer. The amount paid is in proportion to the salary of the teacher. So there is no argument about a savings based upon this myopia.
On the other hand, what happens to the retirement system when there is a sudden spike in the number of pensioners who just happen to retire early, receive a premium and live longer? Sound familiar? Can you say Social Security?
And what really is the plan's total cost of education to the taxpayer? Is it just daily operations or daily operations plus retirement costs? If it is the latter, then the plan is much more expensive to the state and the taxpayers. The costs would include the new hires plus increases in retirement costs, which the present fund may not be able to absorb.
So what is really going on? Are the Michigan Education Association and local school districts attempting to backdoor increased education costs to the Michigan taxpayer while bleeding a retirement fund? Is this a means to avoid the reality that there are underutilized buildings in this state's school system and to protect those teachers and administrators who would lose jobs, perhaps not qualify for a pension?
Or is this to break the bottleneck of institutions that turn out teachers by the trainload while demanding additional taxpayer funding and raising tuition?
As for the argument about "new and fresh ideas vs. those burned out teachers," I am always amazed when cost is used to mask experience and hiring practices in education. The argument always is followed by the lie that school districts can't fire teachers due to tenure; they can if they actually read their own contracts, tenure law and do their respective jobs.
If solutions over funding and the quality of education were the real issues of this recurring issue, then the state would consolidate school districts at the administrative levels followed by combining intermediate school districts. A look at a number of urban and suburban school districts clearly will show where the excess costs are to be found -- in both capacity and administration.
Robert A. Hyduke