For weeks, 73-year-old Ann Jaramillo had been bracing for the decision that could redefine her golden years. It had been nearly a decade since the retired Salinas teacher found out her benefits package had been miscalculated by her school district — and nine years since CalSTRS, the teachers’ state retirement agency, told her that she owed them $75,000.
But last month, the state Supreme Court declined to review the case of Jaramillo and 27 other teachers after five years of legal back-and-forth, dashing their hopes of overcoming a bureaucratic mess that has pitted thousands of California teachers against one of the country’s largest pension funds.
“It feels like fighting a dragon with a fork,” said Jaramillo. “You might get a poke in here and there, but it doesn’t bleed, and for sure, it feels no pain.”
Jaramillo is one of 9,623 retired educators who have had their benefits reduced between 2016 and 2022, and one of many who are now paying back tens of thousands of dollars in “overpayment debt” to CalSTRS.
Some of those overpayments came from a district miscalculation, where teachers were told the additional classes they taught would count toward their retirement. Other errors, districts say, were the result of schools receiving hazy explanations from CalSTRS on how to include bonuses when calculating retirement payouts. There were mistakes for teachers who served as union representatives, and mistakes on whether summer school teaching could be folded into retirement benefits. And while a new law prevents such miscalculations from affecting retirees in the future, it won’t help the thousands of teachers who have already been impacted.
“Retirees have literally had to pay for the mistakes that either the district or CalSTRS were making,” said Jennifer Baker, a legislative advocate at the California Retired Teachers Association. “These are individuals who did what they were supposed to do: they sat down with a CalSTRS counselor, they…
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