]
In the first six months
of 2011, overall public employee retirements were double that in all
of either 2009 or
2010, according to data provided to the AP by the Wisconsin Retirement System. That includes 4,935 Wisconsin school district employees who started receiving retirement benefits, up from 2,527 teacher retirements in all of 2010 and 2,417 in 2009.
Teachers weren't the only ones heading for the exits.