GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The city’s $46.6 billion teacher pension system sold its shares in the firearms industry yesterday, becoming the country’s largest retirement fund to divest from publicly-traded gun manufacturers since December’s elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Comptroller John Liu announced today.

But the vote to do so wasn’t unanimous — and the single dissenting ballot came from a member appointed by the city’s most powerful gun control advocate: Mayor Bloomberg.

Ray Sarola, acting as a fill-in for Bloomberg appointee Carolyn Wolpert, voted against divestment during an executive session meeting last week, a spokesman for the Teacher Retirement System said. Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, of the Department of Education, missed the vote but said yesterday at the board’s monthly public meeting that she opposed divestment as well. (more…)

UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined Mayor Bloomberg and other union leaders to announce new pension reforms

Management of the teachers’ retirement fund is being merged with other public pensions systems under a proposal unveiled today by city officials and union leaders.

In an effort to chip away at the rising costs of the city’s $120 billion pension fund, Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller John Liu announced a proposal to overhaul city unions’ scattered pension systems. Until now, each of the five different funds – for teachers, police, fire, school employees and other public sector — had been managed by a handful of trustees under the comptroller’s office.

Under the proposal, the pools of money from each union will be kept separate but the same professional investors will manage all of the funds. Those investors will not be part of the comptroller’s office and will not change when a new comptroller is elected, as they have in the past.

Bloomberg, Liu, and union leaders said today that the fund’s underperformance had resulted in part from its management structure.

But the proposal does not address other issues underlying the city’s growing pension costs, which have soared in the last 10 years. (more…)

A Queens charter school that pays for pension costs directly out of its budget is cutting programs to afford pensions.

Stacey Gauthier at the Renaissance Charter School is worrying a lot these days — about money. This year she’s had to increase class sizes, cut the summer school program, and forgo hiring experienced teachers when an older teacher retires. Yet she still hasn’t cut enough to be able to afford the school’s rising pension costs, which have grown from $12,000 per teacher in 2004 to $21,000 per teacher this year.

Pension costs for city teachers have been rising steadily over the past decade, but for the most part the expenses have been hidden from individual schools, which rely on the city to cover all pension costs. Yet for a small number of charters schools like Renaissance that participate in the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) out of their own budgets, the ballooning price of a comfortable retirement has been acutely felt.

“We have another year to live,” Gauthier said. “We’re dipping into our savings now, which is okay, but if things don’t rebound, we won’t be financially viable.” (more…)