MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Your former English teacher may have been sitting in the Shelby County School Board meeting Tuesday night, worried about her future.
“We got people they’re getting so little they’d actually be on the poverty line,” said one retired educator.
Retirees on fixed incomes wanted to hear what Shelby County School Board members planned to do with their healthcare benefits and life insurance.
The system said it doesn’t have the money to pay for things as they are now and so change could come.
Spouses could get cut, retirees may have to get insurance on their own, and new employees could be out of luck entirely.
“If they had told me a long time ago that this would be the end result then I would have pursued another career,” said another former teacher.
Sound familiar?
It was the same problem the City of Memphis faced with police and firefighters.
Now teachers have found themselves in the same boat.
Officials said big promises were made in the past without the money to back them up.
“This is people’s lives. We bring this information to the board as a starting point and look to the board to help us solve this huge, huge, huge issue,” said Superintendent Dorsey Hopson.
It could get even bigger.
Cuts could cause new employees to get nothing.
Nothing’s concrete yet, but former educators said they must plan.
“I don’t agree with anything that went on. I don’t know what will be the end result, but if I don’t get my retirement, I’m coming over there and move in with you,” one teacher told WREG’s Wayne Carter.
School Board members said the state told them they have to have this problem resolved within five years.