Lance leaves local school system after 31 years
After 31 years with Warren County Schools, veteran English teacher Anita Lance left the local school system earlier this month for greener pastures in Rutherford County.
“I have to consider my retirement and I wanted something different. I feel this is the best move for my future,” she said.
Lance is now part of the faculty at Murfreesboro’s Daniel McKee Alternative School where she teaches content reading, a subject she said she enjoys teaching more than Shakespeare and the writing of research papers.
In addition to searching for a change of subject matter, Lance said she had mainly been looking for a higher paying teaching position out of county for some time as a means to boost her state retirement pension. In determining the amount of such pensions, the state averages an educator’s salary during the final five consecutive years of employment.
While she would have liked to work closer to home, preferably in neighboring Coffee County, she said she could not turn down the position in Rutherford County.
Further sweetening the deal, she added, was the much lower health insurance premiums she would be paying in Rutherford County. Here in Warren County, which does not contribute to teachers’ insurance premiums, she was paying $458 a month (for 10 months) for family coverage. In Rutherford County she is now paying only $102 a month for the same coverage – a yearly difference of $3,560.
In all, Lance will be bringing home close to $10,000 a year more than she did here.
“Even though I like what I teach now much better than what I was teaching at the high school, I probably would not have gone that far to work if it hadn’t been for the insurance, because paid insurance is a very real salary increase,” she said.
Lance predicted that as health insurance premiums continue to skyrocket, Warren County’s lack of contribution to teachers’ insurance may lead other county teachers, both veteran and new, to begin looking for jobs in counties which do pay a portion of teachers’ insurance.
“Insurance is a big concern and I think teachers would be a lot more satisfied just to have their insurance paid. You don’t have to be near retirement and middle age to have those kinds of concerns,” she said.