CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Teachers in Illinois are retiring at a higher rate this year than last, and it may have something to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Teacher Retirement System, 566 teachers retired between June and September, a 45 percent increase from the same period in 2019, and have continued into October.
TRS spokesman Dave Urbanek said that it is kind of unusual, because normally the retirement season is January through June as teachers want to retire at the end of the school year.
But with the pandemic, he said, more teachers appear to have made the decision to call it quits after school districts started spelling out their back-to-school plans.
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The Teacher Retirement System said it does not keep track of why teachers retire, but hears anecdotally “members retiring in July and August have mentioned the reasons they’re retiring this close to the beginning of the school year are related to COVID-19...either concerns with the virus itself, incompatibility with decisions made by district school boards that employ them, or incompatibility with the technology needed for remote learning.”