One of the biggest barriers to teacher recruitment and retention in Maine has been lifted with a stroke of President Joe Biden’s pen. Starting this month, retired teachers and numerous other public employees can get the full Social Security benefits they have earned—which have been denied to them for years under a federal law designed to prevent “double dipping” in retirement funds.
On Jan. 5, the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act was signed into law, repealing the Windfall Elimination Provision that affected retirement benefits for about 2.1 million county and state employees in 26 states, including Maine. Under WEP, teachers enrolled in state or county retirement programs (like Maine’s PERS) could not collect Social Security benefits they earned through contributions from non-teaching jobs. This unfairly affected not only retired teachers (many of whom have split their career between teaching and non-teaching work) but made it difficult for school districts to recruit teachers from other states or different professions. The rules also prevented widows and widowers from collecting their late spouse’s benefits.
“This is something we heard over and over from teachers all around Maine—that the windfall law was making them think about leaving the profession or even moving out of Maine,” said Dolly Sullivan, program director for Maine Teacher of the Year and the Teach Maine Center. “It was also a huge barrier for a lot of really good people who might want to move here to teach.”
Dorothy Maxwell, the 1994 Maine Teacher of the Year who spent her entire career at Sacopee Valley High School and became a champion for business learning and advocate of online education, knows first-hand how hard the windfall law was on teachers.
“I worked in the summers, I had a part time job much of the time,” Maxwell said. “When I decided to draw on my social security, two-thirds of my payment got axed (because of the WEP).”
The Livermore Falls native, who wrote textbooks for McGraw Hill and served in leadership in many professional associations, said she was gob-smacked by the cut in her benefits, but she’s looking forward to being “made whole” with a promised lump sum payment and ongoing whole benefits from Social Security. And she’s happy that the new law may help draw a fresh infusion of teachers to Maine.
“For those who wanted to be a teacher and maybe were coming from other lines of work, and you also find out that your retirement would be reduced, this isn’t a problem any more,” Maxwell said.
For Stanley Sluzenski, Career and Technical Education Director at St. Croix Regional Technical Center in Calais, the change in the law is “great news … on several levels.”
“I did not start teaching until I was 32 years old, so it will positively impact my retirement,” he said. “In my current role as CTE director I need to recruit experienced tradespeople to become CTE teachers. The (Social Security Fairness Act) removes a huge disincentive for people to change careers.”
Ann Luginbuhl was the Washington County Teacher of the Year in 2014. She has been drawing on her state teaching pension and has been unable to receive social security earned by her late husband (unlike many widows and widowers in the country).
“When I retired in 2022, I had only my teachers’ retirement; since I worked in a rural area at a small school, my salary was depressed and retirement is based on your three highest years of income,” Luginbuhl said.
Under the new law, she would be eligible to receive her husband’s social security benefits along with her teaching pension. “It would go a long way towards making my retirement income adequate,” she said.
Maine’s congressional delegation uniformly and vocally supported the reform.