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By Becky Curtis Co-Chair, PT Committee Hello Part-Timers! FACCC (Faculty Association of California Community Colleges) Part-time Northern Region Governor, Deborah Dahl-Shanks, traveled to Santa Monica from northern California to facilitate the 2nd annual FACCC “Workshop to Go” on part-time retirement issues. This event was once again well attended by part-timers and AF leadership, and well received by all. We really cannot thank Deborah enough for her time and effort sharing her hard earned expertise. A copy of her power point presentation is available at smcfa.org to view or review, and further, you can look at the May 2005 article on part-time retirement issues in the Hourly Advocate, also available at smcfa.org in the Advocate archives. What follows is a brief overview of that information. The STRS (State Teachers Retirement System) Defined Benefit (DB) program, the one all FTers have, along with all K-12 teachers, is the best retirement plan the district has to offer. If you are young and plan on spending some time teaching in public education and believe you can become vested, this is the program for you. It takes the equivalent of 5 years of full-time teaching to get enough service credit to vest into the Defined Benefit program. Once you vest you are set -- you will receive a certain DB every month after you retire for life. All full-time teachers are automatically placed into the STRS DB program, but for part-time teachers it is an option. The good news for part-timers is that all teaching, including summer and winter sessions, counts toward service credit. If you are teaching at |
| two or more districts, and teach 40% or more each school, and you teach summer and winter, you may be able to vest into the program sooner than you think. Many part-time teachers, however, are enrolled in LARISA, which is a Defined Contribution Plan. If you receive statements from MetLife you are in LARISA. Both faculty and the district contribute less money in this plan than into STRS, so the district encourages part-time faculty to join LARISA. If you are only going to be teaching a short time, or have other retirement plans, this program may be better for you since you get all the contributions -- by both employee and the employer -- when you retire, plus interest. If you do not vest into STRS, you only get your own contributions, not the employers. Many faculty members wanted to know about converting from LARISA to STRS. You can request to join STRS at any time, and your contributions in your LARISA account can be rolled over to pay for some part of your service credit for STRS, but to fully vest in STRS may require an additional payment or payments, so it may or may not be worth it, depending. Your best bet is to get some professional financial advice, after boning up on the issues using the many free sources available, including our past articles here in the Advocate. The STRS website is www.calstrs.com for information, forms, and statements. Or contact STRS Ombudsman: Tom Barrett at tbarrett@calstrs.com. The STRS toll free phone is 800-228-5453. And you can contact Deborah Dahl Shanks directly at deborahdahl@aol.com.
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Part-Time Retirement Workshop |
