Public-school teachers are facing a multitude of changes that could diminish their pay checks, benefits and working conditions - among them Gov. John Kasich's proposed state budget, legislation overhauling Ohio's 27-year-old collective-bargaining law and plans to restore fiscal solvency to public-employee pension systems.
An Ohio public-school teacher's average salary is now about $57,000 for 182 official working days.
Among the changes that have been proposed:
• Cutting school funding $1.3billion over the next two years
• Increasing the pension contribution rate, which now is 10percent, by 2 percentage points to save money ($200 million statewide)
• Increasing the pension contribution rate by another 3 percentage points to give the pension system financial stability ($300 million statewide)
• Requiring teachers to pay at least 15 percent of their health-insurance cost (the average now is about 9 percent)
• Taking 15 sick days out of state law, making it a term of negotiation instead
• Limiting the number of unused sick days that can be built up and paid out upon retirement
• Ending continuing contracts
• Eliminating automatic pay increases for longevity, replacing them with merit pay
• Quadrupling EdChoice vouchers to 56,000, funding more students to leave public schools
• Lifting the cap on charter schools, where teachers are paid less
• Instituting Teach for America, which brings in college graduates to teach for two years at low-income schools. Unions in other states have opposed the program.
• Delaying the retirement age from 30 years of service at any age to 35 years and age 60
• Lowering retirement payments to 77 percent of a teacher's highest five years of salary after 35 years on the job, down from 88.5 percent based on the highest three years
• Chopping annual cost-of-living-adjustments for retirees from 3 percent to 2 percent, with no COLA the first five years of retirement
• Streamlining the process to dismiss teachers for poor performance
• Banning collective bargaining for health insurance or limits on a school's ability to privatize services
• Ending work rules as a topic of collective bargaining, such as length of school day, building assignments, class sizes
• Eliminating the ability to strike
• Allowing a school board to implement its own last offer in order to end a bargaining impasse
• Allowing a school board to terminate, modify or renegotiate the collective-bargaining agreement if it faces significant fiscal problems
An Ohio public-school teacher's average salary is now about $57,000 for 182 official working days.
Among the changes that have been proposed:
• Cutting school funding $1.3billion over the next two years
• Increasing the pension contribution rate, which now is 10percent, by 2 percentage points to save money ($200 million statewide)
• Increasing the pension contribution rate by another 3 percentage points to give the pension system financial stability ($300 million statewide)
• Requiring teachers to pay at least 15 percent of their health-insurance cost (the average now is about 9 percent)
• Taking 15 sick days out of state law, making it a term of negotiation instead
• Limiting the number of unused sick days that can be built up and paid out upon retirement
• Ending continuing contracts
• Eliminating automatic pay increases for longevity, replacing them with merit pay
• Quadrupling EdChoice vouchers to 56,000, funding more students to leave public schools
• Lifting the cap on charter schools, where teachers are paid less
• Instituting Teach for America, which brings in college graduates to teach for two years at low-income schools. Unions in other states have opposed the program.
• Delaying the retirement age from 30 years of service at any age to 35 years and age 60
• Lowering retirement payments to 77 percent of a teacher's highest five years of salary after 35 years on the job, down from 88.5 percent based on the highest three years
• Chopping annual cost-of-living-adjustments for retirees from 3 percent to 2 percent, with no COLA the first five years of retirement
• Streamlining the process to dismiss teachers for poor performance
• Banning collective bargaining for health insurance or limits on a school's ability to privatize services
• Ending work rules as a topic of collective bargaining, such as length of school day, building assignments, class sizes
• Eliminating the ability to strike
• Allowing a school board to implement its own last offer in order to end a bargaining impasse
• Allowing a school board to terminate, modify or renegotiate the collective-bargaining agreement if it faces significant fiscal problems
