Every year at this time, public education in our state goes through a very bizarre employment ritual. Superintendents underproject next year's enrollments, school boards marginally increase student/teacher ratios, principals get their revised (downward) teacher body counts, and pink slips begin to fly. Then--at the beginning of the next school year when enrollments don't go down--principals have to beg for reinstatement of lost teacher positions and pink-slipped teachers from the previous year await their call-back notices.
Imagine--if you can--being told at the end of February that you do not have a job next fall, and then continuing to teach (with a cheerful disposition) for the remaining 3 months of the school year. As disruptive and inhumane as this process may sound (and is), teachers and our unions have attempted to provide some degree of sanity to those who have made the longest life commitment to teaching our young people. As much as some politicians disdain tenure and seniority, such benefits do provide a modicum of sanity in an otherwise insane employment process and practice.
I share this rather shameful employment story in order to reveal an important observation. If I divide the amount of money paid into social security--by me as well as my employer--throughout my 45 years of working by my projected monthly benefit, it will take approximately 11 years before I will be drawing my benefits from the "public trough," so to speak. (Everyone can figure this out for themselves by simply taking the numbers provided by the annual Social Security report.) In other words, I am not costing today's taxpayers a single cent for my retirement until I am 76+ years old. And...this assumes that I won't be making any additional social security contributions while working part-time during Phase 4.
At the same time, my retirement as a teacher provides an opening for a younger teacher facing pink-slip paranoia with an opportunity to see a brighter employment future. I feel good about this. So...it's not just businesses that can be viewed as job creators. We retirees create job opportunities as well...and at no additional cost to the taxpayers for the foreseeable future.
With all the boomers seeking retirement these days, employment prospects seem to be looking up for those who may be the most vulnerable in the labor market--our young people.
