The back-to-school employment data is out from the New York State Department of Labor (attached), and guess what? In the face of an upcoming fiscal and economic catastrophe, the public schools in the portion of New York State outside New York City added another 4,900 jobs in the year to September 2008, bringing the total increase since September 1993 to 76,400. This despite staffing levels (as well as pay and cost) in the rest of the state that were already sky-high relative to the national average (adjusted for the student population, the cost of living, etcetera). Overall local government employment in the portion of the state outside of New York City is up 2,500 from a year earlier and 119,500 from 1993. All these people have a “right” to their jobs, pensions and benefits, it seems, and if honoring that right in a budget crisis would drive property taxes too high, well, New York City’s share of state education funding will just have be cut again, Silver and Skelos are likely to agree. As in the previous two recessions, but perhaps to a greater extent, particularly if credit conditions prevent the state from getting through the recession by borrowing even more.
Speaking of New York City’ public schools, their employment rose 1,100 from September 2007 to September 2008. But while New York City didn’t add as many employees actually providing an education, it probably did add a lot of retirees as a result of the deal to allow teachers to retire at age 55 after working just 25 years, instead of age 62 after working 30. According to the annual report ending June 30, 2007 of the Teacher’s Retirement System of the City of New York, there were 23,341 working teachers age 55 to 64, and if they all took the deal (which, for them, cost nothing) the number of retirees would have risen from 64,773 to 88,114, or nearly as many as the 109,868 actually teaching. This ratio could eventually shift to more retired than working, as lifespans increase the number living off others in retirement and the collapse of public services reduces the number working.
The number teaching, of course, is about to be slashed as a result of the economic crisis and the rise in the number and cost of retirees. Given the $38 billion in teacher retirement funds little more than a year ago, the 41% decline in stocks over the past year, and the 8% investment returns those funds are supposed to have had, and the cost of health care for all those additional retirees, the City of New York may have to divert an extra $20 billion or so away from educating children to retirees over the next few years. That’s about the annual budget of the city’s schools. I’d love to hear what that pension fund is worth right now. Market value restart, anyone?
By the way, did I hear Randi Weingarten say that the average retired teacher received a pension of only $19,000 per year? That’s strange, because given that pensions are at half pay (three-quarters with disability) based on the last year working, the average teacher would have to earn $38,000 in their last year for that to be true, or less than their starting salary. According to the report linked above, however, the average retired beneficiary receives about $45,000, tax free. Other benefits are on top of that, and more retirees means more health benefit spending for retirees. Ms. Weingarten probably included employees in other titles who worked five years and then left public service, thus being entitled to a pension of a couple of hundred dollars per year, in the average. The question is, why did the $19,000 figure end up in the newspaper without being challenged in the next sentence? Because some reporter would have to take 10 minutes and look something up?
The weight of interests that are entitled to billions of dollars before the first tax dollar is spent in NYC classrooms (or on the subway or on police patrol or in the parks or in the libraries) has soared. And the number of tax dollars is about to fall steeply. Expect all the interests that have benefited from the re-destruction of the city’s education system to join in protest against that re-destruction — as a phony PR measure. The numbers show the reality. While they were promising, they were grabbing, and now that the money to make good on promises is gone, there aren’t giving any back. To anyone who is going to protest what is coming I ask this — where were you when the “irrevocable” decisions were made? I did all I could then; it’s too late now. After all, you have the same bastards, supported by the same interests and completely indifferent to the rest of us, up in Albany. And they will say, after the elections, that they have “no choice.”
My daughters are currently in public high school here, and adjusting to the reality of an institutional collapse, my strategy is as follows. After he eliminates all clubs and teams, electives, guidance counselors, summer programs and extra help, assistant principals and other administrators, what will the principal have left to cut? I will beg him to eliminate senior year (by having seniors receive a lower priority than those in younger grades in allocating classes, and thus not get any). The alternative will be for freshman, sophomores and juniors to not get the all the courses they require to stay in sequence in the major subjects, because where will not be enough classroom slots in (say) American History for all of them. It thus might take five years or six years to take the courses previously available in the first three.
I’d rather seniors not get any courses, and instead receive a suggestion that they take the GED. At the school my children attend, they will have earned more after three years than I did in high school after four, and I had already warned them that if they went to public school in New York City, they may not have an opportunity to graduate from high school.
But I fear that it might be ever worse than that, particularly for the younger one who has three years left. The goal of government over the next three years will not be to fairly allocate scarce resources. It will be to protect vested interests and maintain deniability. Whatever non-decisions are made, no one will be issuing press releases. The might as well start calling them the Metropolitan Debt Repayment Authority and the Department of Early Retirement, because that’s where all the money will be going. To the extent anyone can’t afford vastly more taxes (if they aren’t a senior citizen) and relies in any way on public services (if they live in NYC), they’re dead.