Florida Retirement System

Regular full-time and part-time employees must be enrolled in one of the College's plans. All eligible employees contribute 3% of their gross earnings pre-tax. In order to get an estimate of what your take home pay would be with the 3% deduction, please utilize the FRS Take-Home Pay Calculator. DROP participants are not required to contribute. The Florida Retirement System (FRS) provides the following two options and is fully portable within the 947 FRS employers:

FRS Pension Plan (Defined Benefit) - An employee is vested based upon when the employee is initially eligible to enroll. 

•Employees enrolled prior to June 30, 2011, will vest upon 6 years of creditable service.

•Employees enrolled on or after July 1,2011, will vest upon 8 years of creditable service.

Retirement benefits are based on a combination of length of service and salary. The formula used to calculate benefits is:

•Employees initially enrolled prior to June 30, 2011, will utilize the average of the 5 highest fiscal years of compensation for calculation of retirement benefits. 

•Employees initially enrolled on or after July 1, 2011, will have the 8 highest fiscal years of compensation for calculation of retirement benefits.

FRS Investment Plan (Defined Contribution) - An employee is vested after earning one year of creditable service. Benefits received are not fixed, rather based on contributions and investment returns. Employees have a choice of 19 investment funds available under the plan.

If you previously worked for an FRS employer certain restrictions may apply. Please be advised that retiring from the investment plan is moving or rolling any money out of the plan, even employee contributions, regardless of the employee's age. Refer to the following based upon your termination/retirement date:

Retirement date on or prior to June 30, 2010

Retirement date on or after July 1, 2010

Deferred Retirement Option Program
The Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) allows regular full-time and part-time employees who participate in the Pension Plan, to retire and begin accumulating retirement benefits without terminating employment for up to sixty months from the date of reaching normal retirement. Normal retirement is based upon the employee's intitial eligibility date. If an employee reaches normal retirement based upon years of service prior to age 57, they may defer DROP until reaching age 57. For more information, consult the Florida Department of Management Services website.

Bencor Special Pay Plan
The College has implemented a special pay plan for employees who are terminating, retiring, or entering into DROP and have at least $4,000 of accumulated sick leave and/or annual leave pay out. With this plan, employees will have the value of their accumulated leave deposited as a pre-tax contribution into a special pay plan up to the current $49,000 limit subject to IRS rules and regulations. Not only will you save in Federal taxes when you leave the college, but you will also avoid the 6.2% Social Security tax and the 1.45% Medicare tax on plan contributions. Employees who do not have $4,000 in terminal leave pay-out will be paid out their leave subject to Federal, Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Once the contribution is made to the Plan, you are immediately 100% vested into a fixed or guaranteed account with Transamerica. At any time, you may self-direct your investment in a choice of 22 accounts. You may also elect to rollover the tax-deferred funds into an IRA or another tax qualifying plan, or you may immediately withdraw your funds.

Community College Optional Retirement Plan
In lieu of the Florida Retirement System (FRS), full-time instructors and administrators have the option to participate in the Community College Optional Retirement Plan (CCORP). Eligible employees may withdraw from FRS and enroll in a tax-sheltered account program with one of the state approved CCORP companies. The college and the employee make the contribution to the participating CCORP vendor chosen by the employee. There is no vesting requirement. Election to this program is upon full-time employment or within ninety calendar days from beginning in a qualified position. The participating companies are listed below:

Bert Ritter
Eileen Ritter
John Hludzinski