Sue Legg of the Florida League of Women Voters wrote here about concerns about teachers’ pensions and whether the 2020 legislature is planning to undermine them.
She writes:
There are rumblings that the 2020 Florida Legislature may revise funding for the Florida Pension Plan. There is no question that the retirement system revenue has declined; it has not been 100% funded since the 2008 recession. The current rate is about 84% of the cost if all people retired at one time. Of course that is an unlikely scenario, but there are now more people vested in the system than are contributing to it. One million public employees participate in the system, about half are teachers and the others are local and state government employees. As retirees increase and new participants decrease, covering costs becomes more problematic…
Pensions are not the problem..The real question as always is whether funding pensions is mostly a political, not a financial issue. The National Association of State Retirement Administrators cited a report stating that an 80% funding level is the federal benchmark for financial stability of state pension systems. Florida’s level exceeds that benchmark. Nevertheless, there is a political divide over providing pensions, and it is closely tied to those supporting school privatization. Florida charters and private schools typically do not contribute to retirement systems, and the resulting high teacher turnover keeps salaries lower. Thus, there is more money available for management companies in the private sector. This is not a recipe for a high quality educational system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Often in states with leadership that promotes privatization there is a pension problem as well. Governors and state legislatures that seek to undermine public education have the power to manipulate teachers’ pensions. While some of the under funding is the result of a faltering economy as in 2008, there are more states with pension crises that are led by right wing members that failed to adequately fund the pension liability. Christie in New Jersey did not make adequate payments to the teachers’ pensions that resulted in a pension crisis as well. Many of these man made crises are a deliberate attempt to force the teachers union to renegotiate teachers’ pensions. Florida already retooled public pensions from a defined benefit to a 401K in 2017. Florida needs about 2,000 new teachers to fill vacancies. A state with low pay, a paltry pension, poor working conditions and lack of interest in improving the existing system is a recipe for further decline, not improvement.
and is thus a state ripe for “tech” in place of humans
“New participants decrease”. Consider the role that the Florida Catholic Conference and Florida Conference of Bishops played this year. Crux, May 20, 2019, “(They) supported Gov. DeSantis’ plan for low and middle class students to attend private and religious schools …one of the largest expansions in the state’s history…DeSantis signed the bill in a ceremony held at a religious school.”
The Florida Catholic Advocacy Network (FLCAN) was established by the Florida bishops to “connect, educate and mobilize Catholics across Florida’s 7 dioceses on PUBLIC (my caps) policy issues”. One of the listed areas is education.
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