I am writing in support of restoring the teacher's COLA at 2011 rates. When I planned my retirement, it was with the COLA being in place. Last year my COLA was.....$350 for the year! This is unacceptable. Also, as I was caretaker for both parents and my father-in-law, I had to retire a bit earlier than planned. Along with that, I had to take my social security at 62 with the 25% penalty because I needed the money. There should be some allowance for people that need to retire to care for their loved ones.

I am writing for return of our COLAs. I am a speech-language pathologist who worked in the Providence Public Schools for 37 years. I retired with my pension and organized my budget and financial outlook based upon my pension and my expected COLA. My husband, Richard Mowry, was a police officer for over 30 years in North Smithfield, RI. He took his job seriously and went beyond to help and protect the residents of his town. His pension was small and he was pleased to get his COLA which helped with bills.

I taught in Central Falls for 31+ years before retiring in July of 2011. At that time, I felt forced into retirement due to the city of Central Falls going into bankruptcy and the state proposing a very extreme pension reform. Three months after I retired, pension reform took place and we all lost our COLA, thus putting me on a fixed income unfortunately based on 2011 rates. Needless to say, inflation has taken a big chunk out of my pension. Our school district did not pay social security. Our COLA was supposed to be our "social security".

I am a teacher who retired in 2005. During my years of teaching I contributed to the pension system with the guarantee that I would have a pension that would support me after retirement. I did not receive huge raises and many years went without a raise, so my contribution to a 403b was limited. During this time I was ALWAYS reminded that I would be taken care of after retirement if I followed all the protocols. 

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I served as an administrator in RI for many years. ( Housemaster Lincoln Jr. Sr HS 1980- 1987; Principal Ponagansett Middle School 1987-1999, Director of School Improvement West Warwick School System 1999-2004; then as a lecturer at URI from 2004-2005. With the exception of the 8 years at Lincoln I have paid into both retirement and Social Security. Upon retirement I received a retirement pension of $57,000.I have two issues:

The on going decline in the value of Rhode Island municipal and state retirees has gone well beyond what is fair to those of us who dedicated our entire working lives to a system that promised the earned benefits we all paid in to.  When the pension system was deemed in danger of failing in 2011 the public sector employees and retirees did their part to help shore up the neglected system.  We saw no pension administrators anywhere called to task for failing to do their fiduciary obligations in municipal nor state departments.

I would like to let you know how negatively the retirement security act has impacted me personally. I am a current public school teacher with 29 years of dedicated service to my district. I was eligible to retire after next school year with 30 years of service before Gina reformed the pension system. With her reform act, I need to work an additional 9 years after this year. Not only was almost an entire decade added to my career, I will not see the monetary benefit when I finally can retire.

I am writing to ask you to do all that you can do to restore the COLA that was promised to teachers by contract upon retirement.  

I have been attendind the meetings of the Advocates for COLA Restoration and have heard many heart wrenching stories of how taking this away from us has impacted so negatively on hard working teachers who always kept their end of the bargain.  

My story:  I retired as a guidance counselor at East Greenwich HS in 2000.  Things were going well (treading water) until my husband passed in 2020.  I cannot get any of his Social Security  pay because of the offset-provision.  BUT, I can have access to his Medicare because we were married; so each month I am paying $174.00 for the privilege of being medically covered.  That comes out of my income.