Hollister School District provides $2,000 for each year of a
teacher’s service
To help alleviate the Hollister School District’s budget
problems and keep young teachers employed, officials offered a new
retirement plan this year that 25 teachers accepted, and added up
to bonuses of at least $20,000 for the departing educators.
The new retirement package provides the newly-retired teachers
$2,000 for every year they were employed within the district,
Assistant Superintendent Dennis Kurtz said.
Hollister School District provides $2,000 for each year of a teacher’s service
To help alleviate the Hollister School District’s budget problems and keep young teachers employed, officials offered a new retirement plan this year that 25 teachers accepted, and added up to bonuses of at least $20,000 for the departing educators.
The new retirement package provides the newly-retired teachers $2,000 for every year they were employed within the district, Assistant Superintendent Dennis Kurtz said.
The bonus would be distributed to the retiree in multiple ways, including $2,000 each year or in one large sum.
To be eligible, the teachers had to be employed by the district for at least 10 years, making the minimum bonus $20,000. They had to be eligible to retire and had to sign up before a March deadline.
The annuity purchased from Keenan & Associates, the largest privately held consulting firm in California, should save the financially-troubled district roughly $256,00 per year, Kurtz said.
The district would save $1.28 million over the next five years.
“It is something we will only do if it saves us money,” Kurtz said.
But with a district budget of over $45 million, it’s a small yearly savings, said district school board member Alice Flores.
“It’s a savings but its not going to knock in any dents,” she said.
That is because the district as a whole had to cut $6.5 million from its budget for the 2010-11 school year in light of dwindling revenues from the state and a continually declining enrollment, due to inter-district transfers.
The district needed at least 23 teachers to retire to curtail the budget after purchasing the annuity plan last year.
The money saved will go directly into the general fund – which will help keep employees who otherwise would have lost their jobs, officials said. As of July 2, the district had brought back 18 teachers who were laid off earlier in the year.
“We want them back to keep them teaching for the next decade instead of seeing them doing something else,” Kurtz said. “We want to try and help them.”
Kurtz added that it was too early to determine if the district would offer a similar retirement package next year. There might not be enough eligible teachers to make it fiscally responsible.
“I would have to look at all of the demographics of our staff,” he said. “Anything is possible, but I don’t know.”
It isn’t the first time the district has offered a retirement plan, Flores said. Over the last few years the district has offered plans that were unique to each year. The offer is different each year, but the focus is the same.
Each plan hopes to cycle the teachers – letting the experienced ones retire and allowing the inexperienced teachers to begin their careers, Flores said.
“It helps keep movement through the district,” she said.
The San Benito High School District didn’t offer a traditional retirement incentive, Superintendent Stan Rose said.
Instead, the high school offered an early $1,000 bonus if the retiree announced his or her retirement early in the school year.
The early retirement would allow the district to search for a replacement, but no teachers took the offer, Rose said. The district was in discussion to develop an incentive with the teachers union but they couldn’t come to an agreement that would benefit both sides.
