A new study, commissioned by the Equable Institute and conducted by the EdWeek Research Center, suggests that policymakers have limited knowledge about the impact of teacher pension expenses on school district budgets.
The study included an online survey, fielded Feb. 6th-20th, 2024, of 970 members of district-level public school boards, and 211 public school district leaders who have a major or moderate influence on district budget decisions. Results indicate that a considerable share of board members and district leaders lack fundamental knowledge of pension funding. For example, 35 percent of administrators and 42 percent of board members did not correctly respond to a basic survey question asking whether educator pensions in their states are funded mainly at the state level or at the district level. Roughly 1 in 3 school officials may lack awareness of their own lack of awareness, giving themselves high ratings for their knowledge of pension funding even as they failed to correctly identify their state’s funding model.
In the 13 states where the legislature directly funds all or most pension costs, roughly half of board members and district leaders say they believe that the need to pay for retirement costs has led lawmakers to allocate less money to other K-12 funding categories than otherwise would have been allotted in the absence of this cost. In the remaining 37 states, most pension expenses are paid for at the district level. Roughly 1 in 3 board members and administrators in these states say increased expenses have led their district to reduce non-retirement related expenditures and/or defer or cancel high-priority initiatives. In suburban districts and larger districts with 10,000 or more students, the share reporting increased retirement costs have led to general cost-saving measures approaches 50 percent.