The purpose of this paper is to characterize the choice made by retired professional school personnel in Pennsylvania to return to work in public education. The authors describe such retiring teachers, administrators and coordinators as “retirees,” and describe such persons who return to work in public education post-retirement as “returnees.” The authors find that:

• PA is excess teacher supply state, employment rate of new teachers is about 20% to 25%.
• The PA Teacher retirement system is a typical defined benefit plan, .025 x service x average top salary.
• Returnees are relatively rare, about 2% of retirees, tend to be administrators and coordinators, younger by 10 years, earn less, tend to retire earlier, tend to be mobile when returning to work, and are selective to where they go in terms of working conditions.
• Returnees typically wait between 2 and 3 years before returning to public education.
• Returnees typically work between 4 and 5 years.
• An exploratory multinomial logit model of the decision to return or not to public education indicates that a higher, inflation adjusted salary reduces the probability of returning compared to remaining retired.

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