Kansas teachers earn pension credit while working for union

An audit finds that a handful of Kansas teachers have accumulated KPERS service credits while working for teachers unions.

Should Kansas schoolteachers who take time off to work for teachers unions accumulate state pension benefits credits at the same time? An audit from Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit finds this has been happening. The audit is titled “KPERS: Evaluating Controls to Detect and Prevent Fraud and Abuse.” The full audit report is here, and highlights are here.

In summary, the audit found this: There were teacher who weren’t teaching, but who were working for an “education association.” Each school district reported the teachers as still working for the school district. Therefore, the non-teachers accumulated pension credits that will increase their benefits after retirement.

The report notes that “KNEA and its local affiliates are advocacy organizations for educators and are not KPERS-covered employers.” (In case you didn’t know, the “education associations” mentioned above are teachers unions.) It also states this practice has been going on for many years.

The report observes: “Second, if that [giving non-school district employees KPERS credit] were happening, the state (rather than the schools) would bear the cost of the additional employer contributions. That is because the state has historically paid the school districts’ share of the KPERS obligation.” This hints at the source of the problem: Someone else was paying. School districts don’t pay for KPERS. Instead, the state does. That, of course, means the state’s taxpayers pay. Recent reforms in the way KPERS is treated may help change this.