A full one-third of Montgomery County school employees will be eligible to retire in 10 years, leaving county officials asking who will fill the void in leadership and how to fund generous pensions.
That figure compares with fewer than one in 10 employees eligible for retirement this year, according to a report discussed Monday by the Montgomery County Council.
Among school principals and central office administrators, about half could be retired by 2018, compared with fewer than 17 percent today. About 25 percent of the school district’s teachers will have reached the retirement ranks, compared with 6 percent this year.
Valerie Ervin, chairwoman of the council’s education committee, recounted a visit to Silver Spring’s Montgomery Blair High School, where a new principal took over in 2007 for 23-year veteran Phillip Gainous.
“It’ll take years — years — for [the current principal] to get the kind of institutional knowledge that we look to Mr. Gainous for,” Ervin said. “It’s a difficult animal to recruit leaders, and train them and move them through the pipeline.”
Ervin commended public school officials for their efforts to train new leaders, but warned that proof of their success would be forthcoming.
Also looming is the means of funding impending retirees’ benefits. For years, Maryland has funded all teacher pensions, but some lawmakers in the General Assembly would like to shift at least a portion of that burden to the counties.
The county’s teachers in 2008 received the highest average salary in the state at about $74,000. Montgomery principals topped the state too, at about $131,000 per year.
Current and future school district retirees currently command about $150 million from the state, up from $125 million in fiscal 2009. This year, the state helped feed the fund with federal stimulus dollars, said Montgomery schools budget director Marshall Spatz. Stimulus money, however, is only good through fiscal 2011.
“That’s another contribution that will have to be found in 2012,” Spatz said, warning of stormy budget negotiations in years ahead.
Council President Phil Andrews said that to shift pension payments on to the county would be especially unfair because of recent increases to the rate.
“It would be extremely problematic for the state to walk away from the obligation, especially after increasing the cost of it just three years ago,” Andrews said.
