![a white man and a woman at a protest on the steps of an official public building. The subjects are holding a homemade sign that reads "our parents fought this fight 30 YEARS AGO" and includes a picture of two people from the past also protesting and holding a sign that reads "keep retirement fund intact." They are surrounded by other protestors, many holding signs that are homemade, and some holding signs that say "I [heart] my public school" with the Kentucky KEA logo emblazoned on the heart. One woman of color in the background holds up her phone to record video.](https://teachfrankfort.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/westvirginia.jpg)
By Deborah Yetter, Louisville Courier Journal
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As a young teacher, Lauri Wade didn’t think much about the fact that in Kentucky, public school teachers are not eligible for Social Security benefits upon retirement.
“When you’re in your early 20s, you don’t think about that stuff,” said Wade, who retired after 28 years as a teacher with Jefferson County Public Schools.
But she does now and that’s why she joined several dozen current and retired teachers early Monday at Atherton High School to rally in support of preserving teachers’ pensions in Kentucky.
As the debate over Kentucky’s underfunded public pension system rages in Frankfort, Kentucky’s teachers — who have flooded the state Capitol in growing numbers — say it’s important to remind the public that their pensions are critical because they don’t get Social Security most retirees depend on.
“If this well dries up we have nothing,” Wade said.
That’s one reason teachers are opposed to cuts to the cost of living increases for retirees in the proposed pension overhaul bill pending in the General Assembly. Because of controversy and opposition — much of it from teachers — legislative leaders have effectively declared Senate Bill 1, the pension bill, dead for the current session.
Retired teachers depend on cost of living increases just like people drawing Social Security, they say.
Raymond Wilcox, a JCPS public school teacher contemplating retirement in a few years, said it’s unfair for lawmakers to look for savings by cutting benefits for retirees.
“They have to raise money,” said Wilcox, who also attended Monday’s rally. “They can’t keep cutting.”
The reason Kentucky teachers don’t get Social Security dates back to 1935 when the Social Security law was enacted, leaving out state and municipal employees, said Beau Barnes, deputy executive director of the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System, or KTRS.
8 Photos, VIEW GALLERY -> JCPS teachers bring pension protest to Louisville
In that era, school teachers didn’t earn a lot of money, Barnes said.
“They worked their whole lives because the only option was to retire in poverty,” Barnes said.
So Kentucky lawmakers, seeking to establish a retirement fund for teachers, created KTRS in 1938 and the current retirement system was established in 1940, Barnes said,
In the early 1950s, the federal government decided to allow states to opt into Social Security for public employees including school teachers, Barnes said. While many states chose to opt in, Kentucky officials did not include teachers, he said, probably because policymakers did not see the need.
“They already had a retirement system,” he said.
Today, Kentucky is one of 15 states where school teachers all or in part do not participate in Social Security and rely on state pension systems, according to a USA TODAY story last year.
The other states are Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas.
Teachers do not pay into Social Security but pay into their state retirement systems.
In Kentucky, teachers pay about 12.9 percent of their earnings toward retirement, Barnes said.
Teachers also are limited to little or none of a deceased spouse’s Social Security benefits under federal law that requires them to offset potential benefits based on their pensions. For most teachers, that means no survivor’s benefits, they say.
If her husband were to pass away, “I get nothing,” said Susan Osborne, who retired from JCPS after 30 years as an elementary school teacher.
Teachers may retire after 27 years of service to get full benefits,
Barnes said the average age for teacher retirement in Kentucky is 59 and the average length of service is 30 years. The average teacher pension is about $36,000, he said.
And while teachers are rightly concerned about their pensions, Barnes said that under funds Gov. Matt Bevin added in last year’s budget and the amount he has proposed for the next two years, the teachers’ retirement plan is on a solid path to solvency.
“That’s wonderful news,” he said.