To Reduce Superintendent Turnover, Change the Pension System
A version of this commentary appeared in the Springfield News-Leader.
If I offered you $100,000 a year for the rest of your life to retire from your current job, would you take me up on the offer? What if I said you could have the money and also get a different job if you wanted? If you would answer yes to these questions, you have gone a long way toward understanding why turnover is high among public school superintendents. We financially incentivize them to “retire.”
Take a look at the recent article from Springfield News-Leader’s Claudette Riley, in which she discussed the problem of superintendent turnover. Nearly every person cited in the report was a superintendent who has retired and is working another job. Doug Hayter retired as superintendent of Branson Public Schools; he now draws his retirement benefit and serves as the executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA). Kelly Hinshaw and John Jungman, also quoted in the report, are retired administrators who now work for MASA.
Given the rules of our current state pension system, it makes financial sense to do just as these folks have done. Consider some of the other retiring superintendents listed in Riley’s report. Shawn Randles is retiring from the Logan-Rogersville School District. After a 31-year career, he’s eligible to draw 75 percent of his final average salary of $152,002 for the rest of his life. Depending on the payout he chooses, this could be as much as $114,000 a year. According to Riley, Randles “plans to start a second career in an education-related field.”
Chris Ford, Fordland’s “retiring” superintendent is in a similar position. He’s eligible to draw $108,000 a year for the rest of his life while continuing to work. He has taken a position at Evangel University.
We are told turnover among superintendents is high because the job is stressful. It is curious then that many retire and take up similar positions in other states. Take Crane’s retiring superintendent, Chris Johnson, who has accepted the superintendent post in Prairie View, Kansas.
Stress may be a factor, but the truth is that superintendent turnover is high because our state’s pension system makes it financially beneficial for our veteran administrators to leave. They can earn more by retiring than they could if they kept working.
As Riley’s piece explained, superintendents are eligible to retire after 30 years of service in the profession or after their years of service plus their age equal 80. This means that someone who starts teaching right out of college could be eligible for retirement by their mid-50s. These individuals can then draw their pension and take on new roles, as long as those roles are not covered by Missouri’s Public School Retirement System.
We should applaud efforts to mentor and train superintendents, but if we truly want to reduce turnover the solution is clear—we must change our retirement system. This does not have to mean abandoning the current defined-benefit pension system, though offering a defined-contribution option is something that should be considered. The solution could be as simple as allowing superintendents to draw early disbursements from their pension fund while retaining their current jobs. This would diminish the financial pull to retire and take up a new job in another state or outside of PSRS.
As long as we continue to make it financially lucrative to retire, we will continue to see our best educational administrators retire shortly after they hit year 30.