Mars School Board member Kimberly D. Geyer, in her July 10 letter, "Pension burdens ahead," cites inaccurate, out-of-date and alarmist reports to paint a grim picture of taxpayer contributions to fund the Public School Employee Retirement System (PSERS) for area teachers and school employees.

Just like all pension funds — public and private — the school employees' fund suffered through three years of very poor stock market returns, resulting from a drop in the market not seen since the Great Depression.

While taxpayer contributions are projected to rise, those contributions are already being projected to be lower than previously predicted.

During 2001-03, the state government and school districts took a "virtual holiday" from making regular employer contributions to the fund, while school employees like me continued to contribute an average of 6.43 percent of salary to the plan.

In 2006, school employees are contributing an average of 7.16 percent of their pay to the plan.

Beginning in his second term, former Gov. Tom Ridge cited reduction in the employers' share of retirement funding to less than 2 percent of payroll and counted it as "increases" in money available to school districts.

The rate increase for employees contrasts with a rate decrease for employers — from 4.6 percent in 2000 to 1.9 percent in 2001, 1.1 percent in 2002, and 1.2 percent in 2003.

At the lowest point of employer contributions (2002), employers contributed $539,000 to the fund, while employees contributed 1,200 times that amount ($662.6 million).

The resolution to the long-term funding concern is to require steady and regular contributions to the fund. That has been accomplished with the employee rate, but not with the employer rate.

In my experience, a sound, defined-benefit pension plan is one of the key incentives to attract and retain high-quality professional educators. That helps ensure a stable, nurturing learning environment for students.

The ability of schools to attract and retain qualified workers would be impaired if the system were abandoned or reduced.