WI Teachers Choose Retirement over Paying More for Benefits
Documents obtained by The Associated Press under the state’s open records law show that about twice as many public school teachers decided to hang it up in the first half of this year as in each of the past two full years, part of a mass exit of public employees, the Asbury Park Press reports. Their departures came before the new law took effect. Nearly 5,000 teachers retired.
The news report said the exodus of teachers and other state employees has led to fears that the jobs might not be filled, and that classroom leadership by veteran teachers will be lost.
In the first six months of 2011, overall public employee retirements were double that in all of either 2009 or 2010, according to data provided to the AP by the Wisconsin Retirement System. That includes 4,935 Wisconsin school district employees who started receiving retirement benefits, up from 2,527 teacher retirements in all of 2010 and 2,417 in 2009.
Teachers weren’t the only ones heading for the exits, according to the news report. State agency retirements were particularly dramatic, nearly tripling from 747 in all of 2010 to 1,966 through June. Retirements from the University of Wisconsin System more than doubled, up from 480 last year to 1,091 this year. All told, 9,933 public workers had retired by the end of June, a 93% increase from 5,133 in 2010. The year before, there were 4,876 retirements.