31 school employees retire mid year

The mood was somber Thursday at the special called meeting of the Russellville City School Board as board members were faced with the task of accepting the retirements of 17 veteran teachers and support staff personnel due to new legislation passed in Alabama that will cause certain educators’ healthcare premiums to skyrocket until that person is eligible for Medicare.
As Superintendent Rex Mayfield read the names of the teachers who were leaving the system, he said he felt as if it was almost like “reading names at a funeral.”
“Some of these teachers have spent their entire careers in the Russellville City School System,” Mayfield said. “It is hard to replace that much talent and commitment. This is a big loss for us – a big loss.”
Mayfield said the group that is retiring has over 532 years of combined experience working in education with over 417 of those years being in Russellville schools.
“I think this speaks volumes about how professional and high-quality these teachers and support personnel are and how dedicated they were to their jobs,” Mayfield said.
With this new set of retirees turning in their official notices, the total number of teachers and support personnel lost due to this legislation in the Russellville City School System comes to 19 since a teacher and a child nutrition worker submitted their retirement notices in October.
In the Franklin County School System, Superintendent Gary Williams said they lost a total of 12 employees including teachers and support personnel.
“This really affects us hard because we lost some good employees,” Williams said. “And not only are we losing good employees but we’ve lost some in areas where their replacements will have to go through extensive training. That’s just a difficult thing to face in the middle of the school year.”
For many of these retirees, they feel they weren’t given much of a choice when it came to their retirement since the legislation would mean a dramatic increase in insurance rates to educators who were of retirement age but did not retire before Dec. 1.
The legislation was originally passed as an attempt to save money at the state level by having individual education employees pay more money towards their retirement and for insurance instead of having school systems pick up the cost.
However, others contend the legislation was passed as an attempt at retaliation against the Alabama Education Association, an organization that has seen its fair share of disagreements with the current state leadership.
But whatever the reasoning behind the legislation, teachers across the state said they are feeling the brunt of it.
Ramona Robinson, who spent all of her 33.5 years as an educator in the Russellville City School System and retired Thursday as the federal programs special education coordinator, said she would have never dreamed of retiring this year, let alone in the middle of the school year, had the numbers not been clearly stacked against her.
“This whole situation just hit me all at once and there was barely time to prepare,” Robinson said. “This isn’t something that has been talked about and discussed. It’s really been swept under the table.”
Robinson said when you’re an educator, you are usually too busy trying to do your job to pay much attention to the news and what each piece of legislation coming out of Montgomery means for you.
“This summer many of the administrators went to a meeting in Huntsville and I heard two legislators discussing some of the repercussions of this legislation and it hit me all of a sudden that I needed to know what they were talking about,” she said. “That was the first I was hearing that my insurance rates could go through the roof.”
Robinson said she discussed some of the things she had heard about sky-high monthly insurance rates and penalties for not retiring with her family, but they couldn’t believe the situation was that serious.
“I was thinking that I had to retire immediately, but my husband and parents thought I had surely heard it wrong. They didn’t think it could be so bad.”
Robinson said she made an appointment to meet with the State Retirement Board in Montgomery so she could find out just how serious the situation was and if she really needed to retire by Dec. 1.
Cindy Hutchins, a fourth grade teacher at Russellville Elementary School who has spent 17.5 out of her 31.5 total years as an educator at Russellville, went through a similar situation to Robinson’s.
“I heard rumors during the summer about some changes but I didn’t really pay much attention until mid August,” Hutchins said. “I talked to some other people in my same situation and decided I needed more information so I went to Montgomery and spoke with someone with the Retirement System. I wanted to know all my options before I decided to stay or retire.”
What both Robinson and Hutchins heard was information they couldn’t believe they were hearing: if they were to continue working and did not retire by Dec. 1, their insurance rates would become so high by the time they reached age 65 that there was no feasible way they could remain at their job.
The reason for this is because Robinson, Hutchins and the 29 other teachers and support personnel who are now officially retired in Russellville and Franklin County, fell into a category of being eligible for retirement, which is the category of people targeted by this legislation.
For someone to be retirement eligible, he or she can be any age but must have 25 years of service or the person can be 59.5 years old with at least 10 years of service.
For anyone falling into that category, serious decisions had to be made and made fast, according to Robinson.
“Making the decision to retire is a life-changing decision. It isn’t something you can just enter into lightly,” Robinson said. “But after looking at the numbers that were laid right in front of me, I don’t see how I had a choice. I was dumbfounded at how much money I would be losing if I continued to work. It was like I was being penalized for all the effort and hard work I’d put in for nearly 34 years.”
Robinson said this decision has been hard, but the Russellville School System has made it easier for her to at least come to an informed decision.
“None of this has been discussed at the state level. It’s been very quiet. But each time Mr. Mayfield or anyone else here received a new piece of information, they came straight to the ones of us who were affected and let us know what was going on so we would know what we needed to do.”
Administrative Assistant George Harper said it has always been the policy of RCS to help teachers make the most informed decisions possible.
“We don’t try to make teachers stay but we don’t try to make them leave, either,” Harper said. “This has just been a hard situation for everyone because we’re losing so many good teachers. It’s a sad day in public education.”
Harper said he was also worried what this new legislation would do to the scope of public education since it severely cuts into the once-superior benefits package the Alabama education system has always been able to boast of.
“Teachers aren’t known for making the best salaries, but the career was still appealing because of the great benefits we had.
“If those benefits are diminished, what’s there to keep young people interested in becoming teachers? What happens to education then if no one wants to teach?”
Mayfield said the awkward timing of teachers retiring in the middle of the school year presented the dilemma of finding replacements or substitute teachers who could finish out the current semester and those who could finish out the school year.
“The vacancies created by these retirements have been posted ans some were filled Thursday at the board meeting,” Mayfield said. “The remaining vacancies will be filled as soon as the principals have time to interview and make recommendations.
“The retired employees may choose to suspend their retirement and be considered for reemployment, which will allow the children to complete this school year with the same teacher. However, the openings filled by the retired teachers will be reposted at the end of the school year.”
Williams said they have already filled their vacancies except for the position of the Child Nutrition Program director, which has been posted.