Monday, January 30
Don't miss your Local Association Lobby Night! Check the schedule and contact your Local office for details.
 Carroll Staggs Retired Carroll "I’ve been retired for six years and even though what we’re doing tonight will not benefit me, I’m pushing for my colleagues who are still working. An education career is not something you chose for the money, nonetheless, you hope for a good pension for your years of service to the community." |
 Yvonne Gambrill Carrolltowne ES Carroll Teacher "Having a better pension means beginning teachers will be assured there will be some compensation for their years of service when they retire. When I first started, I felt sure I would have enough to retire comfortably in 30 years. Thirty years is here and my pension just won’t be enough." |
 Maizie Bell "I’ve been working at my school for 31 years and I’m approaching retirement. I’m afraid of what awaits me. I would like to retire but the way it looks I don’t think I’ll be able to. I love my job very much and I love the children I work with, but there comes a time when we really have to look seriously at the pension and that’s what we’re doing tonight." |
 Penny Nye "We are here tonight because we feel educators should have dignity when they retire and should be able to afford to retire after working 30 years supporting Maryland’s students and looking to the future. We also feel that we should not have to work two or three jobs in order to retire." |
Dori Miller "Teachers’ salaries are low in general, and we all struggle. Up until my third child was born, I worked a second job. One of the problems we have in Maryland is retaining teachers because they just leave after they get a few years of experience. We know that children do better when we have consistency with our teachers. We train teachers and then they go back to get jobs in other states where they can get better pay and benefits – like a decent pension." |
Jaclyn Lichter "We need our Montgomery County delegation to help get our bill through. We met with our delegate Rich Madaleno and talked about what we can do to really push pension legislation through and get what we want on the bill. We talked about increasing our contributions to 2%. As a new teacher this is really important. Teachers who have only been teaching for as long as I have – three years - have been relocating to Pennsylvania. We need to do what we can to keep them in Maryland." |
"This is my first year of teaching. I moved to Maryland from Minnesota. This really hits home for me because I can go back to Minnesota and get what I need there. I’m here lobbying today because I really want to make a difference. I want to stay here – I like the community and the diversity – it’s the reason I came to Maryland to teach, and it’s why I’m here today lobbying for the 2% multiplier." |
"This is my 26th year as an educator. I came here tonight because I can’t live off the pension I’ll get when I retire. The calculation I have, including Social Security, equals about $36,000 a year. I just want to be able to live as comfortably as I can when I decide to retire. The current situation just isn’t amenable to that." |
"I am a second year teacher and looking down the road. I want to be able to survive when I retire. I’m originally from Pennsylvania and, while I love Maryland, the comparison of pension plans – 38% vs. 75% is very strong argument for going back. But I want to stay here, so instead of complaining I thought I would do something about it. Another reason why I’m here is as a former member of Leadership Maryland’s Forum for Teachers and Education - an effort to recruit and retain teachers. A quality pension system will help keep teachers here. As someone who plans to have children in the future, I want quality teachers, not teachers who will roll over every two or three years because the pension benefit is so ridiculously sad." |
"This is my 19th year teaching, but only my second year in Maryland. I’m from Texas and like everyone else here I’ve been looking at my pension. Texas teachers’ pension is ranked fifth in the nation, so I went from fifth to the bottom of the barrel – that concerns me. We need to fight to get what we deserve. If Maryland is ranked in the top 10 for education in the nation, why can’t teachers be ranked up there, too, getting what we deserve?" |
