REGION: Teacher pensions less generous than other public workers

REGION: Teacher pensions less generous than other public workers

• Story
• Discussion

By STACY BRANDT - sbrandt@nctimes.com | Posted: Saturday, January 8, 2011 9:30 pm | (4) Comments | Print

Font Size:

Default font size

Larger font size

Top Pensions

Four former North County school administrators collect annual pensions of more than $200,000 a year and roughly 108 local educators receive pensions of more than $100,000 a year, according to numbers from the California State Teachers' Retirement System.

The hefty retirement pay is because those employees had higher salaries to begin with and worked for more years. Many paid into the state retirement system for four decades.

The former administrators whose pensions top $200,000 annually are:

-- Ken Noonan, who retired as Oceanside Unified School District superintendent in 2007. His pension last year was $249,011.

-- Larry Maw, who retired as San Marcos Unified School District superintendent in 2005. His pension was $229,326.

-- Dave Cowles, who retired as Vista Unified School District superintendent in 2006, His pension was $223,632.

-- Sherrill Amador, who retired as president of Palomar College in 2004. Her pension was $218,511.

Retired county Superintendent Rudy Castruita topped them all with a pension of $281,034 last year. Each year, retired educators get a 2 percent bump in their pensions as a cost-of-living increase.

Educators in North County and throughout the state get lesser retirement deals than most city and public safety employees whose pricey pension packages have made headlines and increasingly drawn the ire of taxpayer advocates in the past few years.

Some former public school employees still draw big money in retirement ---- four in North County pull in pensions of more than $200,000 per year ---- but even those top earners don't get the benefits enjoyed by public safety workers and other city employees.

"Teachers have a more modest formula, and it has been fixed for a number of years now," said Jack Dean, vice president of the nonprofit California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, which pushes for pension reform.

In addition to the lower scale, educators must also pay 8 percent of their annual salaries toward their retirement. In several cities, police and firefighters contribute nothing toward their pensions.

Nevertheless, the California State Teachers' Retirement System ---- the system that administers teachers' pensions ---- is facing an estimated $40.5