Pension reform met with protest - from teachers

Unless you're Ed Rendell and you've have had your head stuck in the sand for the past 8 years, you know that a pension time bomb is about to go off in Pennsylvania.

What happens when a school district attempts to address the issue? Teachers show up to protest, of course. They don't have a problem with bankrupting school districts so they can get their guaranteed lifetime pensions.

From an editorial in today's edition of The Pottstown Mercury:

The percentage increase in local share needed to keep the pension fund solvent will increase more than 600 percent for all area school districts between now and 2012.

Projections compiled by the Pennsylvania  School Boards Association are so dire that school boards are being told they face drastic program cuts or local bankruptcy, unless something changes.

Despite that prediction, teachers and their supporters protested a vote earlier this week by the West Chester Area School Board to endorse state pension reform. The school board unanimously passed a resolution supporting House Bill 2135 and Senate Bill 1185, both of which propose a hybrid pension system to relieve some of the pressure on local school contributions.

The legislation would replace the defined benefit system currently in place and replace it with a hybrid system for public school employees enrolling after June 30.

Read the full report at the newspaper's Web site.