Culver City Observer -

Culver City Teacher’s Pensions from Transparent California was the headline in Neil Rubenstein’s column on March 15. Within this lengthy column (tackling many subjects) was a list of retired teachers’ names and pension amounts, including ours, followed by this sentence.

“In 2016, Teacher pensions paid a total of $11,390,424. In the opinion of many we need a Beverly Hills CPA and a Philadelphia lawyer to keep expenses under control, but now you know the real reason the school district needs more money its pensions and wages.”

You might think that Mr. Rubenstein is simply misinformed, that he does not know that our pensions come from the State Teacher Retirement System (STRS), not the Culver City Unified School District budget. But wait – on February 22, in response to an earlier list of names and amounts in his column, you published a Letter to the Editor from our colleague and retired principal Dr. Marvin Brown, which clearly and cogently explained how STRS works, and that the money comes from a statewide fund into which educators, our employing districts and the state paid over the years of our employment.

Did Mr. Rubenstein read Dr. Brown’s letter? Did your editor read it before printing it? Evidently not.

If Mr. Rubenstein continues writing about how our pensions contribute to CCUSD’s financial burden, what does that say about other opinions he expresses?

Please print a retraction of his comments.

Sara Fields

Gina Grawe

Editors Note: The opinions of our columnists and letters to the editor are their own and not the position of the newspaper. Our policy is to run all printable points of view including rebuttals to our editorials and columnist.