New president for the Vermont-NEA vows to focus on teacher retirement
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By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: September 14, 2009
MONTPELIER – This summer, Martha Allen went from one of the state's smallest schools to a new post as president of the Vermont-NEA, the largest union in the state.
Representing more than 11,000 teachers and other school workers from Bennington to Canaan – the school system where Allen was a teacher and librarian until her new job – she has a lot on her desk. Among the contentious issues she faces are rising education costs and property tax revolts, school consolidation proposals, and declining enrollments.
But the one item that gets her animated is teacher retirement funding, and as head of a powerful union whose employees are tied into every town and city in the state, what she cares about counts.
For Allen, the issue is not just the possible changes to teachers' and state employees' pensions being considered by a commission set up to study how to bring the costs of those retirement systems down. It's that the commission even exists in the first place that worries – even offends – her.
"They are out to eliminate our pension system as we know it," said Allen, who has concluded that the biggest change in education policy being sought by the state is not in school spending but that state officials "need to support our retirement system."
This is not a minor labor disagreement that affects only managers and workers; it's an issue that has critical import to the entire state.
State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding, who worked to convene the group looking at the pension system, said that without changes the cost of the retirement system could simply overwhelm the ability of the state government's main General Fund to pay for anything else, he said.
"Anybody who looks at the system realizes we need to make adjustments to the current benefits, to contribution levels or a combination of the two," Spaulding said. "It's a plain fact."
According to the state treasurer's Web site, the market value of the teacher's fund was roughly $1.13 billion as of June 30, 2009, down several hundred million in the last year, but still a substantial sum.) The system paid out $82.2 million in retirement benefits during fiscal year 2008.) But the key issue is that a crunch in state revenues has pinched the General Fund, even as more funds are needed to keep up with anticipated teachers retirement benefits – a $10-$12 million boost, according to the latest teacher retirement newsletter.
Spaulding does not want to see the retirement benefits for already retired teachers changed, and the benefits of those close to retirement should, ideally, be left alone as well, Spaulding said. But in an age when people are living longer after they retire and when states across the country are seeing revenues collapsing, it is reasonable – and necessary – to ask younger teachers to put more in or expect less out, Spaulding said.
But the proposals to change retirement for teachers looks like something else from Allen's perspective in her new seat.
"It was a promise," she said. "That promise is being broken."
Spaulding said members of the Vermont State Employees Association, the union for state workers, was very helpful in making changes to its members retirement programs and he hopes to work with Allen and the Vermont teachers as well.
"I am looking forward to working with Martha as we work on making adjustments," he said. But in the end "the only thing that is not reasonable is to say we have to have status quo."
In Vermont, teachers' retirements are paid out of the state's main General Fund, even though school spending comes out of the Education Fund, supported by property taxes and other sources. One idea floated by the Douglas administration has been to pay teachers' retirement out of the Education Fund as well.
But that would put more demands on local property taxes, including through the fairly new "two-vote" provision designed to put pressure on some districts to reduce spending, Allen said.
"School programs will end up being cut," she said.
Conceptually, teacher's retirement should probably be paid out of the Education Fund, Spaulding said.
"Teachers are certainly a local education expenditure and the cost of those pension funds for transparency and accuracy ought to come out of those funds," he said.
But to put such a change in place now would very likely have a significant detrimental effect on towns, Spaulding conceded.
Allen, whose husband also teaches in the Canaan school system, has taught for three decades and has two children of her own, so she knows a lot about schools from the inside.
Retirement funding is by no means the only school spending issue that Allen, who replaces retiring Angelo Dorta, will have to handle. The relatively high expense of public education in Vermont – which has among the lowest teacher to pupil ratios and some of the smallest schools and school districts in the country – has been an issue for decades.
Gov. James Douglas and others in the state have worried for some time that school spending will impinge on other state services and budgets, a debate that culminated in the compromise "two vote" system in 2007.
But Allen is not giving much ground in that area either. Instead of looking for ways to limit school spending Vermonters should be happy about the high marks the education system in the state gets.
"We should be proud of our teachers and proud of our students and proud of our system," Allen said.
"I don't see a lot of frills," she said. "I think of my small school and there just isn't any fluff."
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