Yes, but the required age differs depending on when you joined the retirement system and what pension tier you are in. To find out the minimum age you must reach before collecting full or reduced pension benefits, you can speak to a pension consultant at your UFT borough office or attend an in-depth UFT pension clinic. The retirement systems also have several publications that describe the retirement plans in detail. Go to the Teachers’ Retirement System at www.trsnyc.org or the Board of Education Retirement System at www.nycbers.org.

Your pension is governed by state law and protected by the State Constitution. Whenever the State Legislature made substantial changes in public employee pensions, it passed a new law creating a new plan for people hired after the law’s effective date. So public employees fall into different pension plans depending on when they began their service.

The plans may have different costs and benefits, so to find out about your pension plan, you need to know what tier you are in. In some cases, people are permitted to change tiers or to transfer their tier membership from another eligible retirement system.

You can call Retiree Programs at 212-598-6879, check out the Retiree Programs section of the UFT website (http://www.uft.org/chapters/retirees/programs), the Guide to Retiree Programs on our website (http://www.uft.org/health-benefits/retiree-programs), read Si Beagle Learning Center annual meeting notices, attend annual meetings and read the retiree page in the New York Teacher (http://www.uft.org/news/ny-teacher/retired-teacher-chapter-news).

All UFT and Welfare Fund retiree members, as well as their spouses or domestic partners on file with the Welfare Fund, are entitled to participate in the program.

There are coordinators in all five boroughs as well as in Westchester/Rockland/Putnam, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, the greater Washington, DC area, New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Israel. To find the phone number of the coordinator in your area, call the Retiree Programs’ office at 212-598-6879 or visit the Florida Section of the UFT Welfare Fund Retiree Programs on the UFT website or the Outreach Sections for other parts of the U.S or Israel.

Retiree Social Services are available to retiree members and their families by calling 212-598-6880.

Contact the coordinator of the Si Beagle Learning Center where you would like to teach and make an appointment to discuss your idea. Bring your resume and a course outline. You can also mail a copy of your resume and course outline to: UFTWF Retiree Programs, 52 Broadway, 17th floor, NY, NY 10004, or send an email to: lynn.lospenuso@uftwf.org.

For a retroactively enrolled dependent, whether spouse, domestic partner or child, the effective date of eligibility is the beginning of the calendar year in which the dependent is added to the Welfare Fund.

No. Bed bugs are not known to cause or transmit disease and the risk of person-to-person transference in school is very low. No child should be isolated or removed from a classroom setting. It is important to remember that bed bugs can resemble other insects and that many bed bugs submitted for identification are not, in fact, bed bugs.