An analysis revealed that the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten accrued a taxpayer-funded New York City pension for time spent out of the classroom while leading the United Federation of Teachers.
According to a FOIA request filed by the Freedom Foundation to the Teachers Retirement System of New York City, Weingarten has been credited with more than a decade of "service time" while out of the classroom leading the UFT.
A provision in NYC’s union contract with the UFT allows teachers to go on leave from their teaching position to serve as union officers.
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Per the analysis, "Records obtained by the Freedom Foundation from the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York (TRSNYC) show that Weingarten’s taxpayer-funded pension will be calculated on the basis that she has worked full-time for more than 15 years as a public-school teacher in New York City schools when, in reality, she only worked about four."
Freedom Foundation’s analysis indicates that Weingarten would not have become vested in the city’s teacher retirement package at all without credit for the time leading the UFT.
Although Weingarten accrued about four years of service credit in the NYC teachers’ pension system based on her time in the classroom, she needed at least five years to become vested in the pension and eligible for benefits.
Weingarten claimed to have worked as a New York City public school teacher for six years. But, the analysis found she only worked full-time as a teacher for three years, after having spent three years as a per diem substitute.
Records show that Weingarten taught for no more than three years full-time at Clara Barton High School in NYC, from 1994 until her election as a union officer in 1997.
However, she received more than 11 years of additional service credit after being elected as a union officer and going on union leave.
According to Freedom Foundation’s calculations, taxpayers will bear nearly the entire cost of Weingarten’s eventual pension benefits based on pension benefits for teachers with less than 20 years of service credit.
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Freedom Foundation estimates that Weingarten’s pension benefits could easily cost taxpayers more than $200,000.
Furthermore, the analysis estimates that Weingarten will receive about $15,300 per year when she retires. If she retires at age 70 and draws the pension for 15 years, she’d receive $230,000, not counting annual cost-of-living increases.
Weingarten has simultaneously received a generous salary and retirement benefits while employed at UFT and AFT.
The AFT represents 1.7 million members across the U.S.
While being the president of the AFT, Weingarten supported prolonged COVID-19 school closures and promoted progressive ideology in American classrooms.
The last national report card shows the impact that forced at-home learning may have had on schoolchildren, finding the largest decrease in reading scores in three decades.
Math scores, meanwhile, saw their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen done by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the statistics are a sign that schools need to redouble their efforts, using billions of dollars that Congress gave schools to help students recover.
