John Baumgart wrote: "Ayyyyap. My kids have had a few crap teachers making between $80-$100K per year just marking time until they could retire at age 58 with a multi-million dollar pension."
Please, tell us where this school system is as I would like to apply. In our state, if you were in the system by 1983, you will retire with a pension of $18,500. If you joined the system any time after that, the pension is $12,500. That is if you retire with 30 years at age 55. If you work until age 62, then you make a little more, something like 24K and 18K respectively. The average teacher salary in Maine is $37,900. Not going to get rich there. To add insult to injury, the first 13 years of my teaching experience were in Florida. Though I'm vested in the Florida system, a substantial part of the Florida retirement includes social security. In Maine, any retirement I collect, the retirement contributions in Maine, by the way are self paid, meaning they came out of my salary, is reduced by any social security I collect. Talk about an archaic system. Bottom line is, I see no golden parachutes in any of the states in which I worked-Maine, New Hampshire, or Florida. At least not for public school teachers. Are there bad ones out there? Yup! I made my career following bad teachers and cleaning up their messes. A lot of work, and very satisfying, but led to my burning out and leaving teaching at age 42. Had the compensation been better, maybe I would have lasted longer. Dana Twiss Litchfield, Maine _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
