pension rules<\/a> because, they say, reforms enacted for future employees in 2009 and 2012 (the latter commonly called \u201cTier 6\u201d) have made it harder to attract and keep good employees.<\/p>\nThis is a remarkable claim that crumbles under inspection.<\/p>\n
New York state government set a record for the most employees hired in 2023, only to smash it in 2024. So much for that recruitment problem.<\/p>\n
New York public schools had 221,000 classroom teachers last year, a 5% increase from 2019-20. That\u2019s especially notable given that public school enrollment was going in the other direction, falling more than 6% in the same period.<\/p>\n
The number of first-graders dropped more than 8% in just five years.<\/p>\n
Still, want to improve recruitment? State officials could trim the excessive obstacles that scientists, engineers and other accomplished professionals face to become teachers, but the teachers union fiercely opposes the concept. They derided one such plan as opening the door to \u201cfake certification.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Legislature could give employers a new carrot and allow schools and local employers to offer the option of 401K-style retirement accounts to new hires, but the unions don\u2019t want that either \u2014 not even the choice, because people would take it, and the unions\u2019 case for sweetening pension benefits would get even weaker.<\/p>\n
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The inflexible status quo also makes it harder to recruit mid-career people who don\u2019t plan to work in government for 30 years but otherwise might be useful additions at state agencies or teaching specialized high school classes.<\/p>\n
As for retention, as my colleague Neetu Arnold notes, \u201cteachers cite chronic student misbehavior as the top source of stress and burnout, ranking it above workload and even pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
So why isn\u2019t the union doing more to challenge recent public policy changes championed by progressives, such as \u201crestorative justice,\u201d that prevent disruptive students from being punished or suspended?<\/p>\n
Surrendering to the unions\u2019 unreasonable demands will have the guaranteed effect of driving up property taxes upstate and on Long Island, and putting massive pressure on the New York City budget, where property tax hikes would also likely result.<\/p>\n
The argument for sweetening pensions retroactively boils down to making the unions happy\u2014 by adding well over $100 billion to pension costs. There\u2019s no demonstrable upside for the public.<\/p>\n
Albany\u2019s Republicans (with one exception, Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick) are cravenly trying to profit politically from something that will drive up property taxes \u2014 and increase the floor on which the union\u2019s next set of demands will be based.<\/p>\n
That means it\u2019s up to Governor Hochul<\/a> to be Albany\u2019s lone grownup who defies the madness and says no to the unions.<\/p>\nThe alternative, of course, is to believe the lie.<\/p>\n
Ken Girardin is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As George Costanza, that sage son of Queens, once observed: \u201cIt\u2019s not a lie if you believe it.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27693,4241,9,11,10,299,240,5181,13038],"class_list":{"0":"post-185149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-401k","9":"tag-albany","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-pensions","15":"tag-teachers","16":"tag-teachers-union"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}