If you are hired as a new teacher after 2020 is over, you will not have something that teachers hired before 2021 have: retiree health benefits.

A report today in the News & Observer explains that the budget set forth in 2017’s long session of the NCGA did away with retiree health benefits for hires on and after January 1, 2021 to “save money.”

Here’s that part of the state budget:

and from the very top of the next page:

How sadistic is it that in 2017 this was done and three years later we are in the middle of a pandemic and will probably have an incredible teacher and teacher candidate shortage in our public schools next fall. Retiree health benefits were a big recruitment tool for new teachers.

Now that is gone with graduate degree pay bumps and due-process rights.

Oh, and that same 2017 NCGA that took away those retiree health benefits are the same people who did not expand Medicaid in 2017 or 2018 or 2019 or 2020.