UFT calls on New York City Department of Education to reimburse employees on time
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, flanked by educators and union leaders, called on the city Department of Education to reimburse employees on time for tuition and mileage costs.
“The DOE takes months - and sometimes years - to reimburse educators' tuition and mileage expenses. This should not be a problem. This falls under the ‘this is your one job’ category. Yet the DOE is chronically delinquent,” Mulgrew said Wednesday at a press conference outside the DOE headquarters in Manhattan.
Mulgrew said UFT members reported waiting as long as 53 months for mileage reimbursement and 8 months for tuition reimbursement.
"Reimbursing someone in a reasonable amount of time should be business as usual. The DOE needs to stop being a deadbeat employer and pay on time," Mulgrew said.
Educators described a system built to discourage people from seeking payment.
“Talking with my colleagues, we do feel we leave money on the table because of a system that requires us to front the money for months,” said Diana Christopher, an occupational therapist who waited 6 months for a $600 tuition reimbursement.
More than 3,000 UFT occupational and physical therapists are entitled to up to $1,800 a year reimbursement for coursework needed to maintain their licenses.
Occupational and physical therapists, along with speech therapists, school nurses, school counselors, psychologists, nurse/therapist supervisors, and other job titles are entitled to mileage and toll reimbursement if they travel to more than one school building in a day - a universe of more than 15,000 DOE employees.
The online filing requires redundant documentation, educators said. The bureaucracy does not offer a way to track the progress of a submission. Only by sending repeated emails to the DOE, or by filing union grievances, do educators say they get a status update from the DOE, usually an email stating “funds for a check will be released in two weeks,” which usually proves untrue.
“As educators, we are expected to be on time in all we do and be up to date on changes in the profession. Yet that professionalism is one way. The DOE does not fulfill its professional responsibilities on time. This process does not work," Christopher said.