Carol Doherty, previously a five-term Taunton School Committee member and now the 3rd Bristol District State Representative serving parts of Taunton and Easton. Doherty is the daughter of an immigrant family. Her mother came to America at the age of four from the island of Madeira and her father’s family came from Cape Verde. She has lived in Taunton since 1965.
The workplace safety and health issues that COVID-19 has raised in our schools and the ensuing economic crisis caused by the pandemic are the impetus for this bill. The goal of this legislation is to provide some level of economic relief to our K-12 public schools by allowing teachers who are currently eligible to retire the opportunity to purchase service/age in order to retire during the summers of 2021 and 2022. The legislation was designed to ensure that vacancies created by this legislation are backfilled with qualified teachers and that this transition does not create unnecessary turnover during the school year. In addition, the bill’s purchase-of-service provisions are designed to ensure that this bill has no negative impact on the financial security of the state’s pension system.