Retirement and the STRS 180 Day Rule

STRS has a rule that on its face, says that for 180 days after you retire, you cannot work for a STRS employer. The reason is that you cannot collect both your STRS Retirement and pay from a STRS employer for those firsts 180 days. It does NOT mean you can’t work. It does mean that STRS will either:
1. Hold up your retirement checks for those 180 days
2. Or if they have paid you the retirement checks, then they will stop holding up the checks until the 180 day rule is met.
3. The third option, one that a fellow adjunct was able to do, was just write a check to STRS to pay them back for those checks.
4. Oddly, STRS will not tell you how they are going to recoup the money you earn during the 180 days, so you have to plan carefully
With that understood, and with the understanding that some of us do want to continue teaching, how do we do it? What do we do with the district paperwork?
1. You go to STRS and fill out the paperwork, then they give you paperwork to turn in to our District Office. The District will have paperwork they want you to fill out.
2. Here is the important part: On every piece of paper you are turning in to the District, make sure you write on it something to the effect that “I will continue teaching” or “I am only retiring form the CalSTRS system and I plan to continue teaching at XXXX College”
3. This is very important so that they know you are not leaving teaching, which is the option you checked on the form…and by now, they should know that this is a regular occurrence for Adjuncts.
4. You really want to emphasize it.
5. The District will then give you paperwork for you to turn in to the Payroll Office at your site. The main purpose is so they know not to deduct STRS from your paycheck anymore.
6. Question: I wanted to ask another question about retirement. I went to the district to retire from just STRS yesterday and they insisted I take it to my dean, VP and CE President. I explained since I am not retiring from teaching I didn’t need to take the form to my dean etc. They finally agreed, but then I got this email back from my site saying I still needed to do these steps. Could you let me know what procedure you followed when you retired last June? I really don’t want to tell my dean as she might not offer me classes in the future, if she thinks I have retired.
a. Yes, while SDCCD doesn’t require that the Deans or even Presidents be notified, Payroll does. Turns out each of the SDCCD Presidents and Deans have decreed that they too need to be notified. Turn in your paperwork to Payroll for your site. They will take care of the notifications, and they will turn it back in to the District office. Make copies of everything and again write in big letters “Intend to keep on teaching.”
b. Will we still have classes after we retire? Retirement isn’t the factor. I chose to retire because our VP of instruction was threatening to cancel our classes for low enrollment and the stress of constant threats like that was getting to me. Now our Department Chair is threatening us that when they hire the new full timers, and automatically give them overload, that 2 to 3 Adjuncts will lose their jobs for every full timer hired in our School. Retiring gives us insurance. You might look in the contract and add the words and clause number onto your papers that says you get to keep teaching.
c. I retired in December. The 180 days for me was that Spring semester and part of Summer. I didn’t take time off because I was afraid of “out of sight,, out of mind” and wanted my Department Chair to just keep giving me classes without thinking.
7. Our Priority of Assignment is not affected by retirement. Specifically says so in the contract for us, and I am guessing for CE.
8. Do you collect unemployment? EDD doesn’t care if we are collecting Social Security or retirement as long as we paid into it.
9. Do you by any chance belong to PERS? Many of us do because of other employment. If you do, then your retirement date MUST be the same retirement date. Contact me if this applies to you because it can affect how your retirement is calculated, to your advantage.