Baltimore County school employees will be able to choose their retirement plan provider after the school board unanimously voted down a proposal to limit them to one company.
Hundreds of employees gathered outside the school board meeting Tuesday night to protest the retirement plan proposal and the board’s recent rejection of arbiters’ decision to give employees a 2 percent cost-of-living raise. Many employees waved signs — including one reading “No Teacher Left Behind” — and wore black to show that they felt shut out of the process.
School board member Mary-Margaret O’Hare said she was worried that the county would lose too many qualified and experienced teachers if the county moved to only one provider, Lincoln Financial Group, especially during rough economic times that already have many fretting over retirement accounts.
“Your head says you want to have one because it’s the best scenario for liability,” O’Hare said, “but your heart says … you want multiple vendors.”
Employees had the option of 10 providers this year, but only five put forth bids for next year. Most employees use the five still in the process, and school board members will have to decide by the end of the year whether to offer all the providers or fewer.
Cheryl Bost, president of the teachers union, said that if only one provider was offered, more than 5,000 employees would have been forced to switch to that company. She said that in Maryland, three other counties — including Harford — offer one provider.
“I can’t tell you how gratifying it was to listen to your discussion about potentially choosing five 403(B) vendors,” Bob Lever, chair of the business department at Catonsville High School, said to the school board at the end of the meeting.
A cheer went up after the school board members made their decision, and the crowd of employees packed into the meeting room made its way outside.
Maggie Kennedy, an education consultant and former Baltimore City teacher, said the crowd proved it could have an effect.
“When this board has a lot of pressure on it,” she said, “it bends.”
