How lavish benefits pushed by NY teachers unions ramped up school spending to highest in nation at $36K per kid: reports
New York’s lavish pay, pension and health care plans pushed for by powerful teachers’ unions helped ramp up spending on school districts to a staggering $89 billion — with seemingly little payoff but middling student test scores, studies show.Empire State teachers were the second-highest compensated in the US during 2024, raking in an average of $92,696, according to a National Education Association study.And their generous pay has only increased from the 2020-2021 school year, when New York teachers’ $87,738 was the highest average pay in the nation, the Empire Center for Public Policy found.Employee benefits at that time were between 200% and 250% higher than the national average, according to the report from the Albany-based government watchdog group.Ken Girardin, the center’s research director, said New York is one of only two states where teachers continue to get raises even after their labor contract expires.“The union contracts are what really set us apart from other states,” he said.Teacher pay — and other nation-leading education costs, from benefits to pensions to school construction — came under the microscope following a searing study released Friday by the Citizens Budget Commission.The watchdog contrasted the nation-leading, Ivy League-level $36,293 average spent per student in New York with the state’s middle-of-the-pack National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores.“Continuing to shovel more and more money every year to school districts without fundamentally questioning this status quo behavior will not solve this problem,” the CBC report argued.The spending is in part ramped up by New York school districts’ benefits compensation through plum pension and health care plans pushed for by powerful unions such as the United Federation of Teachers.The New York State Teachers Retirement System — one of the 10 largest pension plans in the nation — estimated that Empire State pensions will match 10% of all teacher pa...