Shorted by NYCERS

To the Editor:

As a city employee about to retire, and a member of the New York City Employees' Retirement System, I would like to describe a situation that is probably not that uncommon.

In the early 1970s, I taught part-time at the City University without joining the pension system. When I applied to buy back the time, NYCERS told me that buyback of all prior service, including college teaching time, was based on an 1,827- hour work year. The 1,827-hour work year is based on a 35-hour work week, the standard for most NYC employees.

The Teachers Retirement System (TRS), on the other hand, credits service on the basis of teaching hours per year. The current TRS standard for a full year's teaching credit is a 12-hour per week teaching load (4 courses per semester), which results in a 360-hour teaching year. An older standard previously in effect required five courses per semester and resulted in a 450-hour teaching year. Teaching a full course-load is widely recognized as a full-time job in the college teaching community and is recognized as such by TRS.

In practice, NYCERS's policy of crediting all bought-back part-time service on the basis of an 1,827-hour work year means that if I buy back my seven years of part-time teaching service, I will receive only eight months of pension credit as opposed to approximately two years and eight months of pension credit I would receive under the TRS method.

Classroom teaching hours are considered to be only one part of a college teacher's normal responsibilities, which also include research, publication, course preparation and design, grading of papers and tests, and participation in departmental committees. Clearly, TRS is correct in recognizing that college teaching includes both in-class and out-of-class activities.

On the other hand, NYCERS's belief that only the hours spent in classroom teaching are creditable misrepresents the nature of college teaching and results in severe undercrediting of service actually performed. My attorney found statutes in the city's Administrative Code that require both TRS and NYCERS to use a 450-hour work year as the basis for crediting boughtback college teaching time. Since May 15, 2006, my attorney has been asking NYCERS for an explanation of why it does not abide by its own statute for former college teachers. NYCERS has not yet responded to counsel's correspondence.

DANIEL COLEMAN