OHIO Retired teachers criticize spending

An adoption stipend and subsidized child care are two points of contention.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Retired Ohio teachers who are paying more for health care think their pension fund is spending too much on employee perks at their expense.
The State Teachers Retirement System has spent more than $2 million in tuition reimbursements to its employees since 1999, double what Ohio's four other pension systems have spent combined.
Retired Chillicothe schools Superintendent Dennis Leone, a critic of the STRS, said the disparity is further evidence that the pension fund's administrators "don't have a lick of sense."
Damon Asbury, STRS executive director, said he and the board have gone to great lengths to withdraw or reduce some of the employee benefits. But he defended the tuition reimbursement policy, noting that employees must take courses to improve or acquire skills necessary to perform their jobs.
Asbury also disputed the contentions of some retirees that STRS employees have seen no increase in their health care premiums in recent years.
"Our associates have stepped up and increased their premium costs," he said. "They went from paying essentially nothing to almost 20 percent of the premium."
Disturbed by benefits
Leone and Tom Curtis, a retired industrial-technology teacher from Canton, chafe at other benefits STRS provides to employees, including a 37 1/2-hour workweek, a stipend of up to $5,000 a year for each child they adopt and subsidized child care.
STRS previously paid about $500,000 a year to defray employees' child-care costs. After retirees complained, administrators cut that benefit to about $190,000, which the 56 employees who use the on-site child-care facility are "repaying" by giving up two vacation days and working two hours a week of uncompensated overtime.
Asbury said STRS began offering the adoption subsidy in 1997 at the request of the late Dave Thomas, an adoptee who later founded the Wendy's hamburger chain. STRS spokeswoman Laura Ecklar said four employees have received a total of $16,073 in adoption payments since then.
As for the 37 1/2-hour work week, Asbury said it's a practice that goes back many years. He said it will be examined in an audit to be completed early next year.
More research
State Sen. Kirk Schuring, a Canton Republican who has been critical of some of STRS' employee perks, said he wants to read the audit before urging further reforms.
"It appears that there are still some things that are happening there that are above and beyond the industry standards," he said. "The issue, however, is once you offer certain benefits ... it makes it difficult to make wholesale changes."
John Curry, 56, a retired elementary school teacher from Wapakoneta, took a job as a security officer last year after STRS informed him that health care coverage for him and his wife was jumping from $344 to $562 a month.
They now pay $112 a month for the same coverage that, under the STRS plan, would cost them $676 next year.
"I went back to work so that I could afford health care," he said. "I'm lucky enough to be able to go back to work, but I feel sorry for my brothers and sisters in the teaching profession who might not be able to do so."