National Association of Governmental Defined Contribution Administrators (NAGDCA)

NAGDCA released their annual Leadership award recipients for 2014. Los Angeles Unified School District won in the 457(b) “Plan Design” category! Why did we win? Very easy, LAUSD has one of the lowest costs retirement plans in the country. Take a look at the fees in the following table (updated January, 2017):

 

This is huge. We are not talking about just any employer, we are talking about a public PreK-12 school district.  The vast majority of school districts have historically offered the worst volunteer retirement plans ever. So bad that financial author Bill Bernstein said that teachers are trapped by one of the dankest, foulest-smelling cellars of the financial world.

Fortunately, we are beginning to dig our way out of that cellar.  And this Award means we are doing something right for our hard-working LAUSD employees. 

There were 12 plans submitted and four got an award, including us. The competition was stiff because we were competing with employers all over the country. These employers were city, country and state governments, but not one public K-12 school district, NOT ONE.

This is marvelous for those benefit administrators who created our advisory committee way back in 2006 and for our committee (representatives from the unions). All committee members have worked collaboratively with district benefits staff, the CFO, the professional consultants and Third Party Administrators (TPAs) for the best interests of our employees. This collaboration succeeded and should be replicated in other school districts.

I think we should all be proud!

Here is a list of all the award recipients and the categories: http://www.nagdca.org/dnn/Awards/2014LeadershipAwardWinners.aspx

Steve’s Bio

Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96) taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years and UCLA Extension, retired in 2008. The first generation Italian-American, ex-Marine, Vietnam vet wrote investment articles for United Teachers-Los Angeles’ union newspaper (circ. 40,000) for 11 years. A thrice featured volunteer retirement plan advocate, twice in the Los Angeles Times and once in U.S. News and World Report. He has recently been on the national broadcast PBS Frontline: The Retirement Gamble. He started an investor self-help group with Sandy Keaton for LAUSD colleagues and wrote 6,500 posts in three investment forums since 1997. Frequently quoted and interviewed by the media, testified at state legislative hearings, and honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by the 40,000 member Los Angeles teachers’ union for his retirement investing advocacy.

After ten years, Steve still serves on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee as Member-at-Large and former co-chair. The committee oversees 457(b)/403(b) plans for 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, assets of $2.4 billion.