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Teachers Can Hold Off Retirement No Longer

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By ADAM EMERSON

aemerson@tampatrib.com

Published: December 7, 2008

TAMPA - Five years ago, schools needed to keep teachers like Lourene Weiss.

Families poured into Florida and overwhelmed public schools at a time when voters demanded limits on how big class sizes could get. This left the state in need of tens of thousands of teachers, and Weiss was planning to retire.

Schools couldn't afford to let good instructors go, so lawmakers let teachers extend their time in the state's Deferred Retirement Option Program, or DROP. That was good for Weiss, now 69, who wasn't ready to stop working.

"I felt good," said Weiss, who has taught at Gorrie Elementary School in Tampa for 31 years. "I like teaching, and I'm at a great school. I still had the energy."

Times are different now. School enrollment in Hillsborough County has flattened and tax revenue has fallen. With the promise of worse days to come, the school district is preparing to cut almost $55 million from this year's budget alone.

Teachers given the option to defer their retirement now are told their time is up.

School superintendents ultimately approve the extension, and many already have refused because of financial shortfalls. Hillsborough Superintendent MaryEllen Elia is joining them.

Elia said her school system can save $4.5 million by denying those extensions. Exceptions will be made in rare cases. With most salaries topping $61,000, the teachers in the retirement program are among the highest-paid in the district, and there's no shortage of lower-paid prospects to replace them.

Extending their time, said Deputy Superintendent Dan Valdez, "becomes an expensive proposition."

In interviews, teachers said they understand the difficulties their bosses face and they know money has to be cut somewhere. But they fear administrators are forcing out experienced teachers who still want to work.

Weiss, for one, planned to leave after this year, but had extended her time in DROP by two years. Popular at the school, her classroom is festooned with first-grade writing samples and piled high with story-time books. After three decades, she has taught every elementary grade. One of her former students went to Harvard and mentioned her first-grade experiences on her application essay.

She called the decision to deny extensions practical.

"It comes down to a money crunch," she said. "The county and the superintendent are doing a very thorough job of trying to keep everything in the black."

When asked if she thought the decision was wise, she said, "I don't know about wise."

Lawmakers granted the extensions in 2003, the year the first wave of public employees was set to leave DROP.

The program allows public employees - generally those who reach age 62 or who have 30 years on the job - to work five years while the state pays benefits into an interest-bearing account. Their entrance in the program is their resignation. After five years, they take their pensions and leave.

Back Then, A Need

Superintendents pleaded with the Legislature for the power to lengthen the time for teachers in DROP by up to three years. Teachers were allowed an extension to continue working. School districts such as Hillsborough and Pasco were growing by thousands of students every year and, in 2002, voters amended the state Constitution to place caps on enlarging class sizes, requiring more teachers.

Back then, most districts had hundreds of job vacancies near the start of each school year. Equipped with the power to lengthen a teacher's time in DROP, the Hillsborough school district for the first several years approved nearly every extension, as long as the teacher had a satisfactory evaluation.

But the economy started souring last year, and administrators tightened the requirements. They granted additional time to teachers needed in core subjects such as math, English, science and social studies.

Other districts, including Pinellas and Pasco, were doing the same. By this school year, they were going even further and stopped granting extensions entirely.

When Hillsborough teachers signed up for DROP years ago, however, they watched as colleagues received extensions with no problem.

Joe Joeb, an advanced placement history teacher at Alonso High School in Tampa, is finishing his fifth year in the retirement program. He wanted to extend his time, particularly since the markets have battered his investment portfolio.

Joeb, 66, said that when he signed up for DROP, "I was looking at something I could stretch out to six, seven or eight years. I'm not heavily invested. I've been a teacher for too long. I don't have a lot of money."

His isn't the only budget taking a beating. Tax revenue to the state is falling, so lawmakers are reducing the aid to education and social services.

Although it once boomed too fast for the district to catch up, enrollment in Hillsborough County schools has leveled off at about 190,000 students.

By mid-December, district leaders will have to cut the budget by $26 million that they already expected to lose. But the cuts don't stop there. If Gov. Charlie Crist and the Legislature don't come up with more money for education and other services, the Hillsborough school district may have to cut an additional $28.9 million this fiscal year.

"The more we get in very lean times, the more things that were untouchable become things that are necessary" to cut, said Jennifer Faliero, a member of the Hillsborough County School Board.

Teachers 'Not Businesspeople'

Fifth-grade teacher Janet Vorderburg understands, but still considers the move to stop extensions "a slap in the face."

Vorderburg, 61, teaches science and math at Walden Lake Elementary School in Plant City and has taught for 36 years in Hillsborough County. She extended her time in DROP this year and planned to come back next year.

"I love what I do and I'm good at what I do," she said. "Why would you not continue to work?

"Any of us who have stayed this long, we have not stayed for the money. Teachers are not businesspeople. We give and give and give. We pay out of our own pockets for things for the kids, and we don't ask for reimbursements."

Joeb said he would be willing to come back at a reduced salary. He has taught for 20 years, and considers his earnings payment "for putting up with the bureaucracy."

The classrooms, Joeb said, are going to lose "some old-fashioned teaching experience, and experience is not something you can quantify mathematically."

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.

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