Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Connecticut Teachers’ Retirement System (TRB): the COLA is formula-driven and automatic, though the Board formally adopts each cycle’s figure, service credit can be purchased, and no DROP was found. Vesting takes 10 years of Connecticut service.
Provisional. This page is published at medium confidence. The specific points that could not be confirmed are listed under What could not be verified below, and are named rather than smoothed over.
The verdicts
| Is the COLA granted? | Automatic (formula-driven; Board formally adopts each cycle) |
|---|---|
| Is the COLA compounded? | Not stated |
| Vesting | 10 years of Connecticut service |
| Buy service credit? | Yes |
| DROP? | None found |
| State | Connecticut |
Those first two rows are separate questions and are routinely confused. Whether you get an increase at all is one thing; whether it compounds is another. A system can grant an increase automatically every year and still compute it against your original benefit forever, which is a materially worse deal than it sounds.
The COLA
COLA tiers by retirement cohort: retirees before September 1992 get “a minimum of 3% to a maximum of 5% annually” (CPI-based); members who retired on/after 9/1/1992 and joined before 7/1/2007 get up to 6% (Social-Security-COLA-plus-fund-performance formula, “capped at 1.5%” if fund performance falls below 6.9%); members who joined on/after 7/1/2007 get a tiered maximum of 5%. The COLA applies “once a member has been retired for at least a minimum of nine months.” Whether it compounds on the prior balance is not stated in the pages reviewed.
Buying service credit
TRB lets members purchase a long list of Connecticut and non-Connecticut service: adult-education assignments, hourly-paid certified teaching, part-time lecturing, pregnancy/child-rearing leave, prior withdrawn CT service, substitute teaching, and (non-CT) federal Teacher Corps, out-of-state teaching, Peace Corps, and VISTA service, among others. Cost for previous CT teaching service: “what mandatory contributions would have been paid at the time of employment plus the credited interest that would have accrued through the date of payment.” An online cost estimator is used for additional service credit generally.
Run your own numbers before deciding: some purchases never recover their cost, and the calculator shows which.
Coordinate this with your overall retirement plan
An adviser can help weigh a COLA that may not compound, a service-credit purchase that may never pay for itself, or a DROP election against the rest of your retirement plan, but that does not replace the numbers in your own member statement.
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Vesting
“Have a minimum of 10 years of CT service (prior to age 60)” is TRB’s vested-deferred threshold. Minimum (non-deferred) retirement eligibility requirements were not found in the materials reviewed for this system. A member with fewer than 20 years of CT service by age 60 gets an early-retirement reduction instead of the full 2%-per-year multiplier.
DROP
No DROP mention appears in the TRB pages reviewed. The retirement options found were Normal, Early, Pro-ratable, Deferred-Vested Retirement, and survivor payment Plans C/D: no DROP among them.
DROP is rarer than it appears across the systems on this site: most have none.
What could not be verified
REFUND TERMS: this page does not state what happens to your contributions if you take a refund instead of leaving your account with the system: that comparison was not independently researched for this system this session, and is left as an open gap rather than guessed from another system’s rule. Consult your own plan’s refund/forfeiture terms before deciding. Any additional field marked “not stated” in the verdicts table above was genuinely absent from the official materials read, not omitted for space.
Sources
Read September 3, 2026.
Related public pension systems: Iowa IPERS · Wisconsin WRS.
General information drawn from each system’s own official published materials, not legal, tax or financial advice. Vesting, COLA and buyback rules are set by state statute and plan tier, differ materially by hire date, and can change by future legislation. This page cannot see your own member statement, which governs. We are not a law firm, a tax adviser, or a fiduciary, and this is not personalized advice.