On December 3, the Illinois General Assembly approved Senate Bill 1, a fairly comprehensive set of changes to teacher retirement benefits and to the funding of the Teachers’ Retirement System.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. Changes to the existing system seem unfair since people have been relying on promises made to them. They have budgeted with a certain set of expectations. After all, if you can’t trust your own state, whom can you trust?

Still, I am a fiscal realist. The state of Illinois has fallen into an abysmally deep hole and it can’t keep writing checks for which there are (or will be) insufficient funds.

Eduhonesty: Pension reform has become unavoidable. The budget numbers simply don’t work and those numbers have to be fixed somehow. That said, this post is for aspiring teachers: There are fifty states where you can teach. Don’t pick this one.