Retired Texas teachers, denied cost-of-living raises since 2004, get even smaller checks in 2022

Rising taxes, medical costs and the highest inflation in a generation are squeezing retired Texas educators who live on their monthly pension checks, underscoring their calls for a cost-of-living increase. The payments from the state have not grown for those who have retired since 2004. If a cost-of-living adjustment had been in effect for retired teacher pension payments, as it is for Social Security, a Texas retiree who began receiving $2,000 per month in 2004 would now be getting almost $3,000 per month. Instead, they’ve seen their buying power dwindle: $2,000 in 2022 dollars is the equivalent of $1,350.89 in 200. And besides missing cost-of-living increases, many retired teachers are actually getting slightly smaller monthly checks this year because of changes to the IRS formula for calculating withholdings.

Amy Jo Baker, former president of the San Antonio Area Retired Teachers Association, said 165,000 of the state’s 450,000 public school retirees on pensions receive $1,500 or less each month, an annual salary of $18,000 per year. Most of them do not receive Social Security payments to supplement their income. “This is just really an economic hardship and the state of Texas needs to step up and provide a cost-of-living to these people who dedicated their lives to the children of this state, and they need to live out the twilight of their years in dignity and not in poverty,” Baker said. A number of retired educators at a February meeting in San Antonio described how unexpected medical costs, housing damage from last year’s freeze, rising prices for gas and groceries, the tax withholding changes, and other pressures have forced them to change their lifestyles. Cathy Novosad, 66, who worked in Friendswood ISD, said she receives pension benefits for her 25 years as a Texas teacher as well as a pension from the Illinois system, where she worked for eight and a half years, just over the 8-year threshold to receive benefits.