The Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System is poised today to adopt an increase in the amount charged to school districts to cover their pension obligations.
The new rate of $35.26 for every $100 of payroll is an increase of thirty cents over what school districts currently pay. The state also will pay $35.26 in a matching contribution.
PSERS Chief Financial officer Brian Carl told his Budget and Finance Committee yesterday before it voted to send it to the full board for today’s vote that the annual runaway rate increases are finally slowing down and that future increase should be at or below the rate of inflation. But with inflation skyrocketing, that’s hardly the big news that one would hope for.
Carl said the state is now fully covering its obligations, and pension benefits for teachers hired since 2019 have been reduced, allowing the PSERS program to find some breathing room.
The PSERS pension program is funded by payroll contributions from active employees, state investment of those payments, and the employer contribution. One of the largest public pension funds in the nation, PSERS last fiscal year paid out about $6.3 billion to 240,000 school retirees.
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