by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – As a generation of teachers retire and their burned-out younger colleagues quit sooner, complaining about the workload and the pay, public schools have struggled to keep their classrooms staffed.
Georgia lawmakers thought they had found a solution, passing House Bill 385 three years ago. It allowed retired teachers with 30 years of service to return to the classroom with full pay and pension from the Teachers Retirement System (TRS), provided they sat on the sidelines for one year.
The newly deepened bench helped, but not much, a new state audit has found.
The number of retirees who returned to the classroom represented less than 1% of the state’s teacher workforce, said “Retired Teachers Return to Work,” a report by the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts.
“HB 385 has had a minimal effect on the continued need for teachers and on TRS,” the performance audit said. “The number of full-time retirees employed each year (approximately 350) is substantially smaller than the statewide teacher population.”
One reason, said the report, is that requirements for 30 years of service and the one-year timeout are more restrictive than similar laws in many other states.
Georgia lawmakers adopted the one-year timeout because they didn’t want to encourage teachers to retire earlier, since that could have exacerbated turnover.
But school systems told the auditors that a waiting period longer than a semester caused retirees to find jobs elsewhere, for instance at private schools, or to get a taste of retirement and decide they didn’t want to work anymore.
With HB 385 expiring next summer, lawmakers started rethinking their plan. They proposed a slightly different approach during this recent legislative session.
Georgia public schools were short 5,300 teachers as of December. Senate Bill 150, sponsored by Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, chairman of the Senate Education and Youth Committee, would allow former teachers to return to the classroom 60 days after they retire following 25 years of service.
Lawmakers did not advance the bill, but the Senate Retirement Committee did refer it for a cost analysis. It will still be in play when lawmakers return in January for the next session of the General Assembly.
