STRS Changes Affect Work in Retirement

PPL has played a major in providing qualified interim executives to California Community Colleges. With the sunseting of the waivers and exemptions to the STRS earning limit, the new earning limit as of July 1, 2016 is $41,7323 each fiscal year, challenges are ahead for executives wanting to work after retirement.  You can go the tab JOIN OUR TEAM and find more information about working in retirement.

Keep in touch with PPL representatives as they work to find ways to provide quality interim leadership in the state. There have been a few challenges to current an future retirees based on challenges to your selected retirement system.  Administrators that were in CalSTRS who moved into positions normally covered by CalPERS were being challenged by the CalSTRS retirement system.  This affected administrators working in administrative services, human resources and other assignments that were not considered to be academic work by STRS.

Some administrators were given the choice when they took these positions to stay in CalSTRS or to move to CalPERS.  This required the administrator to file with the retirement system to accept the assignment.  In other cases, the districts thought they had the ability to decide which system to assign to a retirement system and the administrator was required to change systems.

In 2011 CalSTRS challenged a number of assignments as being eligible for their retirement system and went as far as denying retirement benefits to some retirees.  This was appealed by ACCCA and a consortium of professional associations and that first resulted in CalSTRS providing an open window to apply for exceptions.  Finally, legislation was jointly developed with the consortium and CalSTRS that has resolved the issues of retirement system assignment for administrators that were in their retirement system prior to 1990.

Addressing Earning Limits

There is still a major difference between the earning limits for a retiree from CalSTRS and CalPERS.  CalSTRS has set the earning limit on the average retirement calculation for all retirees in the previous fiscal year.  This establishes the earning limit for 2016 -2017 at $41,732.  If your retire from the CalPERS retirement system a retiree is allowed to work for 960 hours without is affecting retirement earnings.  While there are adjustments to the calculation of final earnings it allows for an inequity in the earnings allowed between the two system .  ACCCA has continued to set this inequity as one of its legislative agendas, but to date it has not been moved forward for correction.