Dr. Marc Gaswirth, a retired public school administrator, has written extensively for nearly 50 years about public sector bargaining  and school human resources.  

Sean Spiller, president of the New Jersey Education Association and one of six major candidates in this year’s June primary for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, is both disingenuous and clever. He just endorsed revisions to the school employees’ pension system without explaining how he would pay for the tens of billions of additional dollars in costs. 

This proposal, sponsored by state Senator Linda Greenstein, may go nowhere but Spiller is using it to solidify what he believes is his political base in the primary—the 200,000 NJEA members, their families and friends.  

In addition to the union head, two members of state’s congressional delegation, a former president of the state Senate, and mayors of two of the state’s large cities have announced their candidacies and will be vying for the support of a likely small and divided electorate voting five months from now.  

The concept behind the proposal is simple. Take all school employees who began their employment in the state after 2007 and were placed in various additional pension tiers that provide lower levels of pension benefits and move them into the same tier as most retired school employees are now in. This proposal, if passed, would return us to the vast underfunding of the pension system by previous administrations combined with serious budget shortfalls during the Corzine and Christie administrations. 

Governor Murphy’s budgets have done much to improve the fiscal health of the pension system (although he relied heavily on short-term infusions of federal Covid assistance to help pay for it). But Spiller’s support to return to an earlier time despite forecasted budget pressures beginning this coming fiscal year is an example of unconcealed political pandering of the worst order.

It reveals a campaign strategy of playing to his obvious and strongest political ally, the union that he now leads, that is expected to spend millions of dollars to support him, apparently without the approval of its members whose dues will continue to heavily finance the campaign.

Spiller’s argument is that a more generous plan for school employees will ease the teacher shortage and encourage more individuals to enter the profession. Support for that argument can also be seen in legislative actions supported by the Governor during the last seven years to alter drastically the collective bargaining environment much to the union’s and its affiliates’ advantage.

Among these amendments are limits to subcontracting personnel services to offset rising costs stemming partly from expensive union contracts; extending school support staff employment protections which otherwise would have been previously decided at the negotiations table; ensuring  no reduction in salary, benefits or jobs for public school staff during health emergencies; and expanding paid sick leave and other paid and unpaid leave benefits,  the effect of which has exacerbated the substitute teacher shortage and substantially increased pressure on local school district budgets.

Further efforts to improve teacher recruitment by easing standards to receive a teaching certificate and having the state pay for it and offering incentives for non-educators to gain entry into the profession has yet to yield  positive results. There remains a notable shortage of individuals needed to fill positions  in math and the sciences, special education and bi-lingual education, or, for that matter, demonstrable efforts to ensure that these individuals will be of equal or higher quality to those they are replacing. 

The teacher shortage will not be addressed by just underscoring how stressed, overwhelmed and victimized teachers are but by acknowledging and publicizing robustly how important their work is and how much it should be recognized and honored. Higher salaries, more benefits, and better working conditions negotiated locally, and recent employment protections conferred legislatively, will only go so far. 

Most teachers will never be fully rewarded monetarily for the work that they do. 

The solution is not to continue to promote the impression that they are always under constant siege and pressure from an unappreciated public. While there may be some truth to that assertion, the focus instead should also be on the critical nature of the work they perform, the intrinsic value inherent in it, and the contributions they can make to future generations of students and to society as a whole.

It is indeed disappointing that for the past five years the narrative espoused by education policymakers and union leaders has focused so little on this point but rather emphasized external rewards and incentives. 

But, back to Spiller and the governor’s race. His bid should not be underestimated in a tightly contested race with lots of funding and ground support from the members of the state’s largest public union. Nor should we ignore where his allegiance and loyalties, politically and personally, lie after years of extensive local and statewide union activity.

The Murphy years have been exceptionally good for the NJEA’s political agenda. Fair to say, Spiller’s would be even better.