Puerto Rico, a United States territory, ran off the rails by using debt to spend beyond its means. Year after year, the government could not balance the budget and borrowed instead, building up a debt of more than $70 billion. Last year it defaulted, and the federal government stepped in, trying to restore fiscal order and bring about a giant debt restructuring.

Pensions will be part of that restructuring. Puerto Rico also owes retired public workers more than $40 billion that it has no immediate way of paying; more than $13 billion of that is owed to retired teachers. Last week, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico called for giving current teachers a new, separate retirement plan, to spare them from having to help pay what the government owes its retirees.

“It’s not fair to the current employees to make them pay for benefits the government itself should be paying for,” said Andrew Biggs, a member of Puerto Rico’s federal oversight board and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a research organization.

The problem is urgent for both the governor and the island’s federal oversight board — but it may be of interest to teachers elsewhere, too. Their plans have been poorly funded in the past by legislators who gave priority to more pressing budget needs, or who misjudged the costs of paying so many pensions as baby boomers retired. Some plans felt flush enough in the bull market of the 1990s to increase benefits, only to see the money melt away in the dot-com rout and the crash of 2008. Even longevity gains in life expectancy, normally a cause for rejoicing, are contributing to the pension woes.