The NYSTRS is the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System.

A strong claim, ‘Puter knows. But here’s the facts, based on one Upstate school district.

New York’s Education Law §501(19) defines “service” as “actual teaching or supervision by the teacher during regular school hours of the day … .” This definition is critical because a teacher’s pension is based on (1) the Tier of the retirement system of which the teacher is a member; (2) age; (3) years of service; and (4) final average salary. Here’s a helpful explanatory link to the NYSTRS website concerning benefits calculation. For purposes of this discussion, we are concerned solely about the service component of the equation.

Here’s a link to the currently effective union contract in an Upstate school district. Let’s walk through it, shall we?

Please turn to Section 4(A)(1) where we learn that a full time employee (FTE) teaches five class periods per day.

We learn in Section 4(A)(3) that the District and the Union agree that teaching two classes makes you a .4 FTE, entitled to 33% of the contractual salary. Also, teaching three classes makes you a .6 FTE, entitled to 50% of the contractual salary.

Now please turn to Section 15(H) which provides “[i]f the Association president is a secondary teacher, he/she will be released from fifty percent of his/her teaching responsibilities and from an administrative assignment (study hall or alternative.)”

Let’s do a little math. So the union president gets released from half of his classes, plus his administrative assignment. Let’s assume that five divided by two equals three for purposes of our discussion, in order to be generous to our hard-working union president. Therefore, the union president is a .6 FTE.

Now, to be certain, the union’s contract provides that the union president receive full time health benefits, and that the union reimburse the district for the portion of his full time salary paid by the district for which the president is released from teaching. By contract, this is five-twelfths of a replacement teacher rate. While ‘Puter thinks it foolish to pay anyone for serving another master, much less to give the person full benefits, the district is free to enter into foolish contracts with taxpayer money.

What the district and the union cannot do, however, is collude to avoid New York State law. If the union president is only teaching at a .6 FTE rate, he cannot accrue retirement service at a 1.0 FTE rate. Release time for union president duties does not occur in the statutory definition of service. Only “actual teaching or supervision” counts as service. ‘Puter’s not bright, but he’s fairly certain figuring out ways to screw the taxpayer and gin up onerous work rules is not “actual teaching or supervision.” Therefore, such so-called service cannot be counted as creditable service for pension calculation purposes.

‘Puter doesn’t know for certain whether the district in this case is reporting full, creditable 1.0 FTE years of service for its union president, but ‘Puter’s betting it is. It’s as simple as filing a Freedom of Information Law request to get the information.

If the district is reporting false service numbers, it is defrauding the taxpayers. If the union president, and any past retired presidents, is receiving benefits based on a known fraud, they are stealing. If the district and the president did not know they were misreporting, then the credited service must be adjusted on a going forward basis, at a minimum

Whether you are a .6 FTE or a 1.0 FTE makes a big difference for pension benefits. To qualify for full pension benefits under Tier 4 (see the NYSTRS link above), one needs 30 years of service, and to live to 55. If you’re a 1.0 FTE, you can get your 30 years by the time you hit 52, assuming you started teaching in New York right out of college. If you’re a .6 FTE, the calculation is different. You’d hit 30 years of service at 72, assuming again you started teaching in New York right out of college.

Someone really ought to make an issue of this. How about you, Governor Andrew Cuomo? No? Then what about you, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman? Or how about you, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli? ‘Puter’s betting you’re each too chicken to take on the single largest special interest group in New York.

He dares you to prove him wrong.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.