By Tim Walker
Source: NEA Today
Retired special education teacher KC Walsh started thinking about her pension a few years into her teaching career. “I might have been one of the few who did,” recalls Walsh, who lives in Oak Grove, Calif. “Teaching is an extremely hard job. You have other things on your mind, especially when you are young. But knowing that there was some security at the end my career helped keep me in the profession.”
Walsh has been a longtime advocate for the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS)—a defined benefit pensions (DB) plan and the second largest pension system in the United States. She and other California public school educators, current and retired, know their pension benefits are superior in value and security to what they would receive under a 401(k)-style plan.
But if some politicians and private interests have their way, these plans could be diluted, if not altogether abolished.