The TRS board met for its quarterly meeting in in Austin this week. Per the board’s new schedule all subcommittee meetings were held on Thursday, April 19, with the full board meeting today, Friday, April 20.

Thursday’s subcommittee meetings included the Benefits Committee; the Budget Committee; the Strategic Planning Committee; the Policy Committee; the Audit, Compliance and Ethics Committee; and the Investment Management Committee. Committee agendas are attached in the links above.

Perhaps most significant among the committee discussion was the recommendation of new rates and policy design for TRS-ActiveCare for the 2019/20 school year. ActiveCare is a pass-through program, meaning the amount of money coming in from the state is fixed and any additional expense to run the plan is passed through directly to ActiveCare participants. In addition to some level of recommended increase for each of the ActiveCare plans, the staff recommended that enrollment for ActiveCare-2, the traditional PPO plan, be capped to existing participants. The Benefits Committee moved to recommend the staff recommendations to the full board, which adopted those recommendations during their Friday meeting. More detail about each of the ActiveCare plans including costs can be found in tab 3 of the attached Benefits Committee Board book.

Other committee highlights included a discussion of the need for increased authorization to hire additional full time employees (FTEs). The additional FTEs would primarily be utilized to increase staffing (and decrease wait times) in the TRS call center, as well as to continue providing for the midrange staffing needs associated with TRS’s efforts to update its technology infrastructure, known as project TEAM. The new Strategic Planning Committee also held a lengthy conversation with TRS’s new director of communications. In laying out her vision, she emphasized being more proactive and less reactive in the agency’s communications.

The full board began its meeting today by taking public testimony. A number of active and retired educators were present to testify, as well as governmental relations professionals from three of the four statewide teacher groups (including ATPE) and Tim Lee, the executive director of the Texas Retired Teachers Association. By and large the testimony was focused on the board’s upcoming decision to change the expected rate of return on the pension fund later on today’s agenda, as well as personal stories of the real world consequences of changes made to the TRS-Care health insurance program. The TRS members expressed compelling arguments that the expected rate of return should not be lowered at all from the current 8 percent mark. Organizational testifiers were in agreement that lowering the rate from 8 percent to 7.25 percent was overly aggressive, and all supported a much more gradual approach to lower the rate, starting with dropping it first to 7.75 percent.

After public testimony concluded, the rate of return discussion was the first item taken up by the board. TRS executive director Brain Guthrie presented the staff position, which heavily favored a rate of 7.25 percent. At the end of that discussion, one of the board members appointed to represent TRS members moved to set the rate at 7.5 percent. The motion failed on a vote of four to four. Then one of the board members appointed from the financial sector moved to set the rate at 7.25 percent. That motion also failed on a vote of four to four. At that point the board postponed further action on the item until its July board meeting, and the board moved on to consideration of the rest of its Friday agenda.

You can watch an archive of the full Thursday committee meeting here and the full Friday board meeting, including public testimony, here.