We are all aware of the mass exodus of teachers from our public schools. Many more teachers are considering leaving the profession. As of September 1, I passed my one year anniversary of quitting the profession. School districts and states are beefing up incentives to stay — too little too late judging by the numbers leaving. They’ve known for years trouble was looming but have allowed salaries to remain not only flat, but negative compared to professions with similar licensing demands.

Some districts and states are lowering standards that we teachers have been held to in order to get enough adults into classrooms now. But those people should think twice before they accept a $2000 hiring bonus and get that first paycheck.

Congress has a rather nasty surprise in store

But they won’t find that out until the day they arrive at their Social Security office to sign up for retirement, maybe years down the road.

Feeling like they’re doing a good deed now will cost them big time unless the law is changed. No one tells teachers about it, yet this unfair practice has hammered retiring former teachers for years.

Yep, not only do teachers get penalized with lower salaries throughout their careers, but we get walloped if we work anytime outside of a state teacher retirement system and pay into Social Security. Now, we don’t get to choose not to have any of this money taken from our paychecks. It’s done to us.

Congress penalizes public school teachers at retirement

Yep, Congress made the law to collect, but also to penalize at the end, for the rest of your life, when you retire from working.

Here’s the awful deal, which I’ll clue you about before you step into rescue the schools. When you accept a teaching position, you become a government employee.

I didn’t know this for 40 years! I never once thought of myself as a government employee when I worked off and on as a school teacher. But since you’re a government employee, you’re not allowed to collect your full Social Security benefits if you have any kind of pension too.

Teachers are government employees, not allowed to collect full pensions

This is not true for any other workers in our society. They can work at a job that collects Social Security, and switch to a job that pays a pension, and even another. They’ll get all the benefits they paid for. But not teachers.

Many states have a private Teacher Retirement Fund. It only works for you if you spend your entire working career within it from beginning to end. You don’t quit teaching in that state and take another kind of job that takes money from your paycheck for Social Security. You’ll get docked what was coming to you from Social Security!

Oh, by the way, you also can lose that money taken for the Teacher Retirement Fund if you don’t teach long enough to become ‘vested.” What a losing proposition all the way around.

As you approach retirement, you get quarterly statements from Social Security informing you how much you can expect to receive based on your age and when you file for claims. This is very misleading if you’ve worked as a teacher at any time in your career and had to put money into a state pension fund.

Nowhere are you ever informed that your SS benefits will be reduced so you can’t “double dip,” even though it was all money taken from your paycheck.

Social Security is not an entitlement but a promise

By the way, SS is not an entitlement — it’s money we Boomers have put away for 40-50 years of working that we did not get to spend along the way! Even if you hold off to begin collecting Social Security at the maximum age of 70 because they sweeten the pot by 8% each year, you’ll get slammed then.

I have written to members of Congress about this injustice.

I found out that someone has been trying to rescue teachers caught in this situation. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced the “Social Security Fairness Act” to repeal this unfair requirement back in April 2021! It’s been stalled in the Senate Committee on Finance ever since.

Members of Congress “double-dip” and much, much more

Of course public workers should be able to claim our full Social Security benefits — especially at a time of rising inflation.

Here’s one of the rubs for me: all members of Congress worked at a job before they got elected. Should they be able to receive their full pension plan for serving in Congress? That’s $74,000 a year from the Federal Employee Retirement fund — more than I ever made as a teacher. And they get that for life — yet only have to serve five years to get it at age 62. Plus they receive full Social Security benefits and a 401(k)- like plan (health care, too).

How dare they penalize teachers for double-dipping!

Just to spare you a shock, you who are accepting a vacant teaching assignment, I bet no one has told you that you’re jeopardizing your future retirement thanks to Congress.