Excellence In Education Lincoln Daily News January 2025 Page 31 The Teacher Retirement System (TRS) is such a pension system for teachers in Illinois. If you are reading this, you likely know this already, so let’s skip to the nitty-gritty, the ugly truth, the need to make retirement more equitable for Tier 2 educators. A Tier 2 educator is anyone who was hired as a teacher for the first time on January 1st, 2011 or after. If you are a young teacher, you likely have heard about this, but may not be as well informed as you could be. I know that’s where I was just a year ago, and this is my seventh year teaching. To say that Tier 1 and Tier 2 educators are not equal in the eyes of TRS would be an understatement. Tier 2 is an extremely flawed plan for a large number of reasons. First, and certainly not least, is the age at which these two groups are allowed to retire without incurring financial punishments. For those teachers in Tier 1, they can retire at the age of 55 with 35 years of teaching service, 60 with only 10 years, and 62 with only 5 years. Even in the oldest category, Tier 1 educators get an extra half a decade of retirement, time to enjoy with their families, taking trips, and doing the things they were not able to do while working as an educator. Educators in Tier 2 are not allowed to retire until the age of 67, regardless of how many years of service they have provided the state. To add insult to injury, TRS does allow Tier 2 educators to retire as early as 62, but not without a significant cost. For each year a Tier 2 educator is under the age of 67 when they begin claiming retirement benefits from TRS, these educators must forfeit 6% of their retirement benefits per year. This means a Tier 2 educator could forfeit up to 30% of their retirement benefits for daring to retire five years earlier than the state of Illinois dictates they can. Using myself as an example, if I work until the age of 67 as an educator, that would mean I would have provided the state of Illinois with 44 years of service. Another large issue, and one that is particularly insulting considering some of us will have to spend a few years shy of half a century teaching, is the way retirement benefits are calculated for Tier 1 and Tier 2 educators. ‘Wait, they aren’t calculated the same way?’ I hear you asking. No, not at all! For those in Tier 1, the amount they receive each month from TRS is the average of the educator’s “four highest consecutive years” in their last ten years teaching. For Tier 2 educators, this is “the final average salary of the 96 highest consecutive months of service out of the last 10 years.” To someone not Continued --
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