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April 2006, Volume 20, Issue 3 - Sudden STRS Syndrome |
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By Martin M. Goldstein
If you’re not in STRS, you might be, anyway.
If you decided not to join STRS when you first came to SMC to teach, and chose LARISA instead, which is administered through MetLife, you may find out someday that you have been in STRS for a while, and that you are going to be paying into it starting now.
This happened to me, and to other faculty I’ve spoken to, so it’s not an entirely rare or random occurrence. Essentially, if you taught or counseled more than sixty hours in one pay period before 2005, you were required to join STRS, just as you would have been if you became full time faculty. In 2005 the sixty hour rule was repealed and you can no longer be compelled to join STRS.
So if you began, as most of us do, with less than sixty hours per pay period (I started with one class, a 20% load, in the Spring of 1999) and joined LARISA by choice, thinking, as I did, that I would never vest in STRS so why bother, you could be in for a surprise: Sudden STRS Syndrome.
It happens when the Los Angeles County payroll reviews their records and finds out that you should have been in STRS because you exceeded the sixty hour rule some time in the past, which in my case happened in the Spring of 2001, five years ago. It can happen through a combination of teaching, counseling and reassigned time that exceeds that sixty hour trigger, which is measured by weekly teaching hours, about which you truly do not want to know more.
What happens now is that you are retroactively put into STRS as of the date you first were mandated to have joined-- meaning for me that as a part-timer with five years of 60% load (and more, with reassigned time) I could have already vested in STRS, which requires five years of service credit.
Also, from whenever it is discovered that you should have been in STRS for the last five years or whatever, you start paying into STRS, rather than LARISA. But what about the back payments to STRS, payments into the plan all those years you worked, which, since 2002, include summer and winter sessions? You haven’t been paying into STRS, nor has the District. You’ve been paying LARISA at 3.75%, as has the District-- one reason the District likes to steer you into it when you first sign up. But STRS requires 8% from you, and 8.25% from the District.
Can you pay back into STRS, (and have the District do the same) so you can actually get full STRS benefits? Can you roll over your LARISA into STRS to help backfill that payment? Can you buy back even the time you worked before you “joined” STRS, i.e., my time from 1999 to 2001, before I had to be in it, but was teaching here?
The answers are, depending on whom you ask, yes, yes, and yes, or no, no, and no. If you ask STRS on the phone, they will tell you no, no, and no, but if you ask the STRS Ombudsperson, as I did, he will tell you that it can be done, and tell you how to do it. (I have an appointment to see a STRS Counselor soon, so we’ll se what s/he says.)
Clearly it’s a devilishly complicated process, but STRS will help you if you find the right person to ask. It will cost you (and the District) money, and depending on your age and amount of service credit (equivalent full school years worked) and other retirement variables, it may not be something you want to do. But if you’re in STRS, even if you don’t think you are, it will come up at some point, and the sooner you address the issue, (i.e., the younger you are, and the more time you have to pay into STRS) the better it is for you if you do decide vest into STRS.
So don’t get caught with Sudden STRS Syndrome. Check it out before it catches you. Start with the STRS website, www.calstrs.com, or call 800-228-5453 and ask for the brochure on how to “Purchase Additional Service Credit.” A form in that packet can help you get the information you need to make a decision. STRS won’t (and legally can’t) tell you what to do, but with the information they give you, you can run the numbers with your retirement counselor and make a sound decision.
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