School District Braces For Teacher Retirements In Last Year Of Incentive

Stan Winquist came to Glenwood to teach in 1979.

For more than three decades, he’s taught ag education and then industrial arts. His work with in the classroom brought him a nomination from the Iowa Department of Education for Teacher of the Year in 2014.

Winquist, who announced last December he would be retiring at the end of the school year, is one of several longtime Glenwood teachers in the district this year to take advantage of the district’s retirement leave incentive. A process by which the district pays a long-tenured teacher a bonus for taking an early retirement.

“I think this was the last year they were going to offer the incentive leave so I figured it was time,” Winquist said. “I wouldn’t have minded teaching about four more years, until I was 62, but this was the last year they were offering it (the leave incentive) and they don’t seem to have a plan if they’re going to offer it again so I decided to take it.”

Glenwood’s leave incentive program is available to certified and classified staff with a minimum of 13 years of consecutive service in the district. The incentive allows tenured employees to retire and receive a one-time, lump sum payment from the district. The amount of that payment is determined based on the employee’s current salary and the starting salary of a first year teacher in the district, meaning a teacher selecting the incentive would get 80 percent of the difference between those two figures. Classified employees would receive 38 percent of their current yearly salary.

Glenwood Superintendent Devin Embray said a teacher with 30 years of service in Glenwood would receive in the neighborhood of $23,000 to $24,000 in incentive money. After nearly two decades on the books, the Glenwood School Board voted to end the incentive program last year. This will be the last year the incentive is offered in Glenwood. Jan. 6 was the cut-off date for this year’s incentive.

In all, 17 district employees have accepted leave incentive retirement offers this year, including nine teachers. The incentive is in essence a cost-benefit gambit for district’s always watching their bottom line. The financial savings for the district comes in the difference in salary between a veteran, out-going teacher’s higher wage and a new, incoming teacher’s lower salary. While Embray can’t put his finger on exactly how much the leave incentive has saved the district over the years, that equation has fueled significant financial savings for the district’s coffers.

“The savings obviously comes from hopefully replacing (retiring staff) with younger staff that are on the beginning side of the salary schedule so there’s cost differences in those savings between a veteran staff to a younger staff. It’s a fiscal cost management program.”

Incentive dollars are paid out of the management fund, not the general fund, which doesn’t effect the district’s primary operating budget.

“Even if it’s a small bottom line, it’s helped,” he said. “Some years, it’s a bigger bottom line because of the ability to hire back at much lower rate and other years, maybe it’s not as big.”

The nine teachers retiring at the end of the school year take with them a collective 223 years of service in Glenwood.

At 36 years, Winquist is the longest-tenured teacher to accept the incentive bonus. Also stepping down in the 25-plus year category are high school science teacher Brad Rasmussen (35 years), high school math teacher Craig Trager (32 years), second grade teacher Ann Aldrich (27 years) and middle school special education teacher Sharon Hofmann (25 years).

While trimming those salaries fits the cost benefit analysis of offering the incentive, some district patrons have raised a concern about the real benefits of trading an experienced teacher for perhaps, a less experienced one. Embray is aware of those issues.

“It concerns me too if you don’t see quality (teachers) coming back in to backfill,” Embray said. “I don’t think anyone is irreplaceable but it’s very difficult in some areas, especially in those career teaching areas and science and math. Those are difficult areas to fill because of the expertise, but we’ve been fortunate in the ability to hire back quality staff.”

The question Embray most often gets about the program is “Would staff have considered retirement if the incentive were not available?”

Simply put, Yes, he said. “Statistically, people retire when they’re ready to retire regardless of an incentive. The incentive is a nice thing to do, but it’s all in how the incentive is interpreted.” Some view the incentive, Embray said, as “Thank you for your years of service” in addition to their participation in the pre-funded Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (IPERS). But still, he added, the district’s goal with the incentives is cutting costs first and foremost.

“From the district perspective, it’s a cost savings tool but it is viewed by some as a thank you, bonus type of thing,” Embray said. “That being said, being a public employee, that doesn’t sit well with some people.”

While Embray hates to see the district lose great teachers for any reason, Embray has a strict policy of not putting pressure on either side of the retirement option.

“I don’t want to give them a sense of guilt one way or the other so it’s difficult for me,” Embray said. “But I always rejoice when people don’t take the incentive and stay and I rejoice when they do retire because I know they’re ready and they want that and can move on.”

The fact the incentive wouldn’t be an option next year and with no timeline when it might return, definitely factored in Winquist’s plans to move on. Janice Kinzle, an elementary art teacher in Glenwood, also took that into account when she announced her retirement plans this year. Her husband Craig took the leave incentive four years ago. After 36 years teaching and the last 14 in Glenwood, Kinzle was ready to join her husband in their next chapter.

“It definitely tipped the scales that I’d take advantage of it this year because I knew I could,” Kinzle said. “I wanted to go on to other things. I just decided, Craig is already retired and we’d like to travel and do our hobbies a bit more. I just think it’s time for the second half of my life.”

Kinzle said she too is worried about an expanding experience gap between teachers and how that might affect students.

“I think in my area, art, you need experienced teachers to handle the 1,000 kids I teach. Otherwise you’re setting them up for failure,” she said. “If you get someone brand new out of college and they don’t have experience, that would be wrong.”

The district is currently in the process of vetting applicants for Winquist and Kinzle’s positions and all open staff positions for next school year. That’s never an easy process, Embray said, even when not losing long-tenured teachers.

“The math and the science we feel real good with in our applicant pool. CTE (Career and Technical Education) is a tough spot to fill,” Embray said.

Embray said filling the CTE position vacated by Winquist, who has taught the class for 18 years at the high school, isn’t going to be easy for two factors.

Winquist is an experienced, popular teacher with three decades in the district and CTE teachers aren’t growing on trees.

“Iowa State just graduated less than a dozen,” Embray. “There just aren’t a lot of shop teachers out there that can do what he did. He created a unique program with his tech courses and his career transitions class. Replacing that, we may have to look at different programming if we can’t find the right person. We’re open to looking at that and giving the students a new experience if we have to.”

Winquist said whichever way the district decides to go with the program he largely built, he’d like to see teachers like himself, consulted to help fill the experience gap for whoever steps in all over the district.

“It is hard to find people in the career and industrial world who want to teach so it bothers me (the program) could be dropped or changed,” Winquist said. “I’d like someone to be able to talk to me because I don’t know what they’re going to do. I have a lot of suggestions.”

One thing is for sure, Winquist doesn’t plan to take his leave incentive and just sit around in retirement.

“I’ll probably find some other work. I don’t think I’ll be totally not doing anything,” he said. “I’ll miss teaching and demonstrating. I won’t miss the paperwork.”