At the end of her 40-year career in public schools, Johanna VanderMolen was known as one of the best school superintendents in the Bay Area, a careful listener who did not assume she knew it all.
For a decade, she led the Campbell Union School District, which improved student performance even as it plugged holes in the budget during a punishing recession.
Five years ago, in 2010, VanderMolen retired, at the age of 61. “I’m at that age, and it’s just time for me to go,” she said then. “My husband is retired, and I want to spend time with family now. It was a hard decision to get to.”
There was, however, one big solace in retirement. VanderMolen got a handsome pension from CalSTRS, the state teachers retirement system.
It was so handsome that Transparent California, a website that tracks pensions and salaries, listed VanderMolen as one of the top three teachers pension recipients in the Bay Area in 2014.
Her total? According to Transparent California, it was $278,003. My first question: Just how did VanderMolen get to that lofty number?
(My second question, which will never get answered: Why wasn’t I at the high school career day when they explained the benefits of public pensions?)
Longevity
The short answer is that VanderMolen retired from a well-paid job and had a career marked by longevity. The CalSTRS system rewards both.
Bear with me on the math. Her final annual salary at Campbell Union was a very healthy $270,204. For every year of service — technically, it was 39.845 years — VanderMolen received 2.4 percent of her final salary, a number known as the multiplier.
If you multiply all that (270.2K x 39.845 x .024), you get about $258,386, which was her base pension. VanderMolen elected to take a survivors benefit for her husband, which reduced her payout by slightly more than 3 percent.
Because of her longevity, however, she was eligible to receive an additional payment of nearly $400 per month. A CalSTRS spokesman says she has received several cost-of-living bumps, which have added $1,700 to her monthly total.
When all that is boiled down, CalSTRS says, VanderMolen is entitled to $275,943 yearly. You’ll notice this is a little less than the Transparent California number. CalSTRS spokesman Michael Sicilia had no immediate explanation for the difference — though he does not dispute the higher figure.
Rarefied air
Should we be shocked? Once you’ve gone through all the numbers, you realize that VanderMolen very much played by the rules. She spent a long career in the schools — making them better, by all accounts — and the public has rewarded her handsomely.
But for those of us who know teachers who get by on much less, the air at the top seems awfully rarefied.
In fact, reform is on the way: The Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013 attempts to limit such large pensions, installing a cap of $136,440 per year. That only applies to those just starting their careers in public education. It won’t apply to VanderMolen.
A good thing for her, too: VanderMolen, whom I couldn’t reach for comment, lives in a very nice district of Sausalito that overlooks the bay.
Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/scottherhold.
