Report: During COVD, teacher union membership dropped, revenues grew
Mike Antonucci's report shows the NEA had a 70k drop in membership, $49M in revenue growth
A new report by Mike Antonucci published on The 74 Million’s website shows that during COVID national teacher union membership for the National Association of Educators (NEA) dropped by 70,000 yet revenues increase by $46 million.
The 2020-21 school year was a near total loss for student learning, from which the system is still struggling to recover. Many states kept classrooms locked down for the entire year. Students left public schools, some never to return. School employees lost their jobs, and teachers unions lost members.
But those membership losses didn’t have a commensurate effect on the unions’ bottom line. On the contrary, the National Education Association and its state affiliates experienced significant boosts to revenue during the shutdown year.
The combined income of NEA and its state unions reached almost $1.75 billion in 2020-21, an increase of $49 million (2.9%) from the previous year. Almost all union revenue is exempt from income and capital gains taxes.
Antonucci goes on to write that the NEA collected almost $397 million in revenue with the “richest” affiliates being California ($222 million), New York ($167 million), and New Jersey ($153 million).
Also noted in the report is that there were 513 NEA staffers in Washington, D.C., out of which 396 had six-figure salaries. Nationwide, some 2,300 NEA affiliate employees made a salary of over $100,000.
The NEA affiliate in North Carolina, the NCAE, got a mention in Antonucci’s report:
Both the North Carolina Association of Educators and the South Carolina Education Association saw dramatic growth in revenue due to the sale of properties. The North Carolina union sold land it owned in Raleigh to a real estate developer for an estimated $20 million, while the South Carolina union sold its headquarters building to the state for a highway widening project.
That union also benefited from $112,624 due to the forgiveness of a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government’s Small Business Administration.
“Any union that can add $49 million to its coffers while losing 70,000 members amid the near-total shutdown of work sites is not one that needs to fear diminished power and influence. NEA is too big to fail,” Antonucci writes in closing.
More To The Story
Antonucci’s report includes a comparison document that shows membership and revenue changes between the years 2020-19 to 2020-21.
The total revenue for the NCAE in 2020-21 is listed as $9,509,433; a change from the previous year (2019-20) of 70.5%. Per Antonucci’s report, that big increase is due to the sale of its headquarters building in Raleigh.
Of that revenue total, the percentage attributed to NEA grants is 14.3%, and the NCAE’s overall net assets total $4,198,506.
The NCAE’s total membership listed for 2020-21 is 25,906. That’s a -3.5% drop from 2019-20.
For the year ending Dec. 31, 2014, the N.C. State Auditor reported 9,452 dues payroll deductions for NCAE members. The auditor’s report noted the NCAE refused to turn over its membership data and that the auditor had no way to compel them to do so.
In the next year’s audit report, when the N.C. State Auditor tried to collect membership counts from the NCAE, the auditor again reported the “NCAE refused to furnish the information.”
The audit report noted that, that that time, the NCAE boasted “70,000 members” on its website, yet there were only around 96,000 teachers statewide that year.
The only count the auditor was able to obtain was the number of those paying dues through payroll deductions which at that time turned out to be 9,542 - a far cry from 70,000.
The NCAE has refused to give the state auditor its membership count every year since that 2015 report - that is until the most recent audit report for employee association membership counts covering 2021 that was issued in Sept. 2022.
The Sept. 2022 audit report did not state the NCAE refused to furnish the information and reported a membership count of “26,204.”
Interestingly, the auditor only lists a total membership count and does not separate payroll deductions as the reports have done in the past:
If the NCAE number includes the count of dues payroll deduction members, the count would likely be closer to 20,000 or less.
For comparison, through the NEA’s reporting, the NCAE had a membership total of 17,154 during 2019-20. Yet, the N.C. State Auditor reported the number of dues payroll deductions for the year ending Dec. 31, 2020, as only 5,996. That was a drop from 6,083 in 2019.
As a point of fact, NCAE’s dues payroll deduction membership totals have remained under 10,000 and had mainly been declining over the years.
Payroll deduction members recorded in other past years by the state auditor include 5,391 (2018), 5,702 (2017), 6,402 (2016), 7,331 (2015), and 9,452 (2014).
As noted by Bob Luebke in a 2021 article on the John Locke Foundation website, “Over the last decade NCAE has had some of the most significant membership and revenue declines of any state affiliate.”
Luebke charted the decline:
Luebke notes the 2020-21 data was not available at the time he created the chart. If that data - the 26,204 number - is added, it would represent a 52.75% membership increase from the last year on the chart.
Two questions arise: why has the NCAE suddenly complied with membership counts and how did their membership total grow during the pandemic years?
The answer to the first is that perhaps the NCAE knows that the NEA’s numbers will come out eventually, so why fight it?
The second answer may be that the membership numbers are what the NCAE decides they are and they do not have to provide a category breakdown of their membership total.
In short, their membership may not be just active teachers. Here’s why.
Just prior to and during the pandemic, the NCAE began granting memberships to pre-retired, retired, and aspiring educators.
Additionally, the NCAE created a “community ally” membership option for $25 that can be granted to any family members of public school employees, business owners, and “community supporters” of education.
Bottom line: A true reading of the number of active teachers in the NCAE’s membership rolls will be impossible to discern until the auditor is able to obtain a breakdown of the NCAE’s various membership options.
Related reading:
Video: NCAE leaders discuss their “power” to keep NC schools closed