Karen Scharrer-Erickson reviews a new teaching tool Thursday with Lisa Schuk, a second-grade teacher at the Academy of Accelerated Learning in Milwaukee. Scharrer-Erickson, 64, said she reluctantly filed for early retirement from Milwaukee Public Schools recently. Credit: Rick Wood

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Two days before the April 1 teacher retirement notification deadline in Milwaukee Public Schools, Karen Scharrer-Erickson drove to the district's human resources office on her lunch break.

The teacher of 43 years entered the room. Then she burst into tears.

"I am totally not ready," Scharrer-Erickson, a literacy coach at the Academy of Accelerated Learning, said this week. "I never thought about retiring until the (Gov.) Scott Walker situation, because this school is so special and I am working with the most incredibly caring teachers I have ever known."

At a time when the governor's plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for teachers and increase state employees' payments for health care and pension costs looms overhead, some school districts are seeing record numbers of senior teachers such as Scharrer-Erickson turn in their retirement paperwork.

Although their pensions are beyond the reach of lawmakers and local officials, many teachers fear that changes could mean they soon could lose early retirement benefits such as health insurance that helps support them until they are eligible for Medicare.

Some districts, such as Oshkosh, Appleton and Madison, have extended their retirement deadlines to Friday. Preliminary figures reported by Oshkosh and Appleton showed a large increase in the number of teachers filing retirement paperwork. Oshkosh's 37 staff retirements is double last year's number and the highest since the district started tracking in 1994. Appleton already had seen 70 retirements from teachers and others in their bargaining group this week, up 29 from last year.

Mequon-Thiensville's retirements just about tripled from last year: 28 teachers by the Feb. 14 deadline vs. 10 last year. Green Bay also saw three times as many retirements this year compared with last: 140 teachers and 15 administrators, according to a spokeswoman.

The results are double-edged for school districts: While the retirements mean the loss of years of classroom experience and cherished professionals, they also could help districts avoid layoffs in what is expected to be a tough fiscal year and even save money by replacing some of their highest-paid employees with teachers who receive lower salaries.

For many seasoned educators, it's a decision wrought with emotion: leave a job you enjoy to secure retirement benefits under your current contract or continue to work and take a gamble on what the union can secure for you in future agreements.

School districts aren't alone. The Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds reports heightened interest in retirements among all the state's public employees. But the wave of teacher retirements means the loss of years of experience in classrooms throughout the state and a potential blow to the quality of its schools, said Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union.

"The amount of experience and expertise that walks out the door with these retirements is going to be impossible to replace," she said.

Some school districts have extended retirement deadlines through April 15 or later and still don't know their final numbers. Other districts, such as Wauwatosa and West Allis-West Milwaukee, cap teachers' early retirements each year and are therefore buffered from extra interest that might arise from the governor's proposals.

Still others, such as Whitefish Bay, set their retirement deadline before the new governor announced his collective bargaining plans and have refused to extend it.

May help avert layoffs

In places where retirements have spiked, district officials hope that they can help avert layoffs or other more dramatic measures districts might have to take to balance their budgets in the upcoming school year.

"As we try to meet budget shortfalls and have reduced positions, the hope is the retirees match," said Jack Bothwell, executive director of human resources for the Waukesha School District, where pent-up demand and a future cap on post-employment benefits have prompted nearly 100 teachers to file for retirement at the end of the school year.

When retirements don't uptick at a time when funding is expected to be tighter than any time in recent history, less-senior teachers may be forced to leave in greater numbers. Janesville Public Schools, a district of just under 10,000 students, had 11 teachers and one principal file for retirement as of Wednesday. That number is comparable to previous years, Human Resources Director Stephen Sperry said.

On Monday, the district issued layoff notices to 125 teachers, about 15% of the teaching force - the largest wave of layoffs in the district in more than two decades, Sperry said.

"I imagine we'll bring some people back, but we wanted to make sure we gave everyone a chance to seek unemployment," Sperry said.

207 file in MPS

In Milwaukee Public Schools, Scharrer-Erickson is one of 207 teachers who have filed paperwork to retire with full benefits, according to the district. That's about double the teacher retirements the district recorded in the summer of 2010, but not the exodus some people had predicted.

Scharrer-Erickson, who is 64, said she loves her school, on S. 78th St. near W. Morgan Ave. The K-5 school just received authorization to offer International Baccalaureate programming, and Scharrer-Erickson said she was hoping to help the program grow.

But she also knows that if she stays, she'll likely cost another teacher a job. She also said she feels she's entitled to the retirement benefits she's earned over her 25 years in MPS. It's part of what drew her to the public system after working in Catholic schools for 18 years, she said.

Mike Langyel, president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association, said the number of teacher retirements in MPS may have been held in check this year because the teachers have a contract good through the end of June 2013.

In the Mukwonago School District, where officials declined to extend the teaching contract to keep those guarantees in place, 40 teachers have submitted their retirement requests this year - at least double what Prairie View Elementary School music teacher Jan Rolfe said she has seen in her nearly three decades with the district.

She's leaving sooner than she expected because she fears what would happen to her retirement plans if she stayed. But she also fears what will happen to the schools in her district when she and the other teachers leave.

"We're the teachers that these parents have been waiting for their kids to have," she said. "We're the teachers that their brothers and sisters have had. We're the teachers that mentor the newer teachers. And we're all going to be gone."