Teachers as Public Enemy Number One

Published in the New York Times:

N.Y.C. vs. N.Y.S., the Pension Battle New York City should take control of its finances, and pension costs, back from Albany.

63. HIGHLIGHT

Vincent Amato New York City March 25th, 2011 12:45 pm

It is to Mayor Bloomberg's credit that when he first took office he made a variety of attempts to resurrect an ailing school system. Among the steps he took was to raise teachers' salaries. In a letter to the mayor I wrote at the time, I pointed out that over the course of a career that spanned nearly forty years, my wages were such that the cost of raising a family in New York City forced me, and thousands of teachers like me, to work a second and often a third job, and this--as was also commonplace--in a household with two wage earners. If the city was going to expect more of its teachers, that is, to bring their full energies to their primary role, they required a living wage. So-called moonlighting would have to be seen, as it had in the past, to be a serious problem, particularly if there was to be parity between the wages of city teachers and their counterparts in suburban schools where more was expected but the rewards were greater.

As the article points out, raises in wages obviously raise pension costs, which are in part calculated on what is called a teacher's FAS, or final average salary. What often seems lost in the current debate, however, is that these costs are mitigated by steps that have already been taken to reduce the city's pension obligations, namely the institution of pension "tiers" which serve to gradually ratchet down those costs. The UFT has so far agreed to a second, a third and even a fourth tier, and there is talk of going to a fifth. Thus, much of the cry for reform has been taking place over more than two decades of cost reduction measures. What this also means is that, as time goes on and teachers on the new tiers begin to retire, the bill to the city will go down. It is true that for teachers who had been in the system since the 1960s, the mayor's salary increases translated into a generous pension package since they were on tier one and their pensions, based on their FAS, would reflect the wage increases. But this fortuitous "window" would only apply to teachers who had four decades or more in the system, and their number is small.

As a Tier One teacher, seen by many to have obtained a golden parachute that is excessively generous, I can only say that, looking back I would have much preferred to have been earning a living wage during my working years, that the perennial stress of having to work extra jobs to support my family of five, with its impact on my family and on my work life largely ameliorated. For years, the UFT seemed to be finessing contractual gains toward the interests of senior teachers while the needs of newer teachers coming into the system were sacrificed as they watched wage increases go to their seniors and the gradual negotiating away of original pension prerogatives. In spite of what must have appeared to these newer teachers as preferential treatment for older teachers, for decades, the needs of all teachers were barely being met.

As teachers, working and retired alike, we understand the nature of our current transformation by political demagogues into our nation’s Public Enemy Number One. Whether it is Milton Friedman or Michelle Rhee or Chris Christie or Scott Walker, the key word is “public”. Teachers across America work in the most significant public trust in the nation. A free education for all of our nation’s children was once considered an almost sacred right. The public schools--from the little red school house to the large urban high school--were an integral part of the American experience and produced generations who loved learning and, in return, went on to make incalculable contributions to the building of a great nation. If we allow our schools to fall victim to a dark ideology, we will be much diminished.

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