Morton: Ala. teachers should pay more for health insurance, retirement to offset budget cuts

Morton: Ala. teachers should help with budget cuts

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama schools Superintendent Joe Morton unveiled a plan to deal with budget cuts for fiscal year 2011 partly by making teachers pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.

The plan, unveiled Thursday, also calls for a constitutional amendment that would base appropriations to K-12, postsecondary and four-year universities on the number of students enrolled at each level of education, a move supported by the state teachers union.

But the Alabama Education Association voiced less enthusiasm for other parts of his plan, which would:

—Freeze state funding to the Public Education Employees’ Health Insurance Plan at the FY 2010 level and direct the plan’s board to develop a program to match available funds

—Raise the amount of experience required for future education employees to retire from 25 years to 30 years

—Increase the amount education employees pay into their retirement plans from 5 percent to 6 percent

—Raise the minimum age for future participants in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, or DROP, to 30 years of service and 57 years of age

Speaking to the State Board of Education at its monthly K-12 worksession, Morton said he thinks the amendment basing funding on enrollment “is the only thing that would save K-12 education.”

It “cuts right to the heart of the matter and we don’t caught up in bickering,” Morton told the board.

Currently there is no exact formula state Legislators use to decide the education budget and often base it partly on previous appropriations that might not have been adequate in the first place.

“It’s an annual decision and an annual fight,” Morton said. “It’s an annual debate — you can’t make any long-term plans.”

His proposal also says K-12 education should receive at least 70 percent of all expenditures for the fiscal year 2011 education budget that the Legislature will enact next year.

The new fiscal year that began Oct. 1 started with a 7.5 percent across-the-board cut to education budgets. That was on top of a record 11 percent cut in the previous fiscal year. Some school systems, especially those in areas with low local support, will likely be forced to take out loans but those with local financial reserves and good tax bases will fare a little better.

Mary Bruce Ogles, assistant secretary for the Alabama Education Association, said the teacher’s union supports the constitutional amendment for enrollment and the move to guarantee education funding at 70 percent.

But she said the group has problems with the rest of Morton’s plan.

“We’re a little concerned that Dr. Morton would want to balance the budget on the backs of educational employees,” she said Thursday. “He wants to be charging more for their health insurance and making changes to their retirement plans. We don’t think that’s the way to go.”

Morton said raising the retirement age would save money by reducing the number of years the department would be responsible for an employee’s medical care before they would become eligible for government-funded Medicare.

“I don’t know what the board will do and don’t know what the Legislature will do but I’m hoping that if this board endorses the plan the Legislature will support it,” Morton said. “Let’s not keep using all the money we have for health insurance and use what’s left over for our students.”

Board member Randy McKinney of Gulf Shores said he would do away with the DROP program altogether. The program is designed to keep good teachers in the classroom by paying them to work past their retirement dates but McKinney said those jobs could be filled by younger teachers who are being laid off.

“If people want to work, let them work. I don’t think we should pay them not to retire,” he said to low murmurs of disapproval from some listening in the conference room. “My position is if they don’t want to teach anymore, ‘bye.’”