Once again our disconnected union leadership secretly negotiated an ATR buyout incentive, without any ATR input. While the complete ATR agreement has not been published, UFT President,Michael Mulgrew's letter to ATRs has given us the general details of the ATR buyout. The buyout incentive is short on money and is not pensionable. That alone makes the ATR buyout incentive inadequate.
According to the UFT, ATRs who accept the buyout and retire or resign, have two options. Option 1 is to receive a lump sum of $50,000 or option 2 is to receive $35,000 and get six months of health benefits. However, if the ATR resigns to take the ATR buyout, they will no longer be eligible to receive the four lump sum payments of their retro money owed from 2009-10, which is 87.5% of the total ump sum payout and the 2% raise owed to them next June.that would cut deeply into the money received in the ATR buyout.
The major problem with the ATR buyout incentive is that the money is less than a half a year's salary for a 20 year teacher. Moreover, teachers who want to participate in NYSUT's attractive Catastrophic Major Medical (CMM) plan would not be able to since you must be an active member as of January 1, 2018 and the ATR buyout incentive is only for the time period between June 5 to July 14, 2017. Finally, many ATRs who are retiring at the end of the school year may have already put in their retirement papers and may not be eligible for the ATR buyout incentive since, according to Mulgrew's letter, they must submit their retirement papers between June 5 and July 14.
Based upon the failure of the previous ATR buyout in 2014 that saw just 8.5% of the ATRs take the incentive, I suspect that the DOE will be fortunate if 10% take the inadequate and insulting buyout. Honestly, I cannot see an ATR willing to resign for the buyout, maybe a few ATR retirees who haven't already put in their retirement papers might take advantage of the buyout but not many.
By the way, if you're an ATR assigned to a District, the new ATR agreement for the 2017-18 allows the DOE to place you in any District in your Borough. Another loss for the ATRs. Then again, our disconnected union leadership doesn't have to worry about what school they will be "forced placed"in.