Eighteen years after Alaska’s Legislature voted to end the state’s guaranteed public pension system, retirement benefits are again playing a key role in the state’s election. “It’s not an issue to the public. It’s an issue to the people who are backing the individual candidates,” said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor organization. Hall is behind an independent expenditure group that has spent more than $500,000 to boost legislative candidates that support a return to guaranteed pensions for ...
Debate over school funding is dominating the Alaska Legislature as districts faces teacher shortages and in some cases multimillion-dollar deficits.
6 KB Raw 1 System_Name Plan_Shorthand_equable 2 1 Alaska Teachers’ Retirement System Alaska TRS 3 2 Arkansas Teacher Retirement System Arkansas TRS 4 3 California State Teachers’...
On November 5th, unusual activity was detected on some Division of Retirement and Benefits (DRB) electronic systems. To perform containment and an in-depth investigation, the Division’s servers and internal network were isolated which resulted in the interruption of DRB services. The initial investigation is now complete and revealed no indication of data loss or any larger impact. Work has now shifted to restoring DRB services as quickly as possible. The Division has been able to find alterna...
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The vast majority of public school teachers are enrolled in defined-benefit pension plans, which require regular contributions from both employees and employers. These pension contributions are deducted automatically from teachers’ paychecks as a percentage of their total pay, so these contribution rates have a notable impact on their overall compensation packages. Educators who are required to contribute higher rates to their pensions will see more drawn from their paychecks and, consequently, less in the amount of pay they are taking home. ...
Schools in Alaska are struggling to cope with a dearth of funding. Gov. Dunleavy has suggested paying teachers yearly bonuses, but officials want a more permanent funding increase.
The Alaska State Capitol, photographed on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023 in Juneau. (Loren Holmes / ADN) ; Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau. (Loren Holmes / ADN) ; Rep. Tom McKay, R-Anchorage, speaks with a colleague on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023 at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau. (Loren Holmes / ADN) ; Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, stands in a hallway on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau. (Loren Holmes / ADN)
about retirement. Alaska’s staffing challenges have impacted virtually every public service... by teacher vacancies and have come to rely increasingly on teachers coming from overseas on...
Teachers and the union support the move to solve the teacher retention problem in Alaska. But they say the number one reason they’re leaving is pretty obvious.