General News
Broad support to re-elect Romain to TRS board
Feb 28, 2008 2:48 PM
MONA ROMAIN Helped achieve 55/25 agreement.
UFT officials are urging members to sign petitions to nominate UFT Assistant Treasurer Mona Romain for re-election as a teacher member of the Teachers’ Retirement System board. She was endorsed by acclamation by the Feb. 6 Delegate Assembly and her supporters include Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.
UFT President Randi Weingarten said Romain has “done an excellent job” and urged UFTers to “keep her in office with all her good experience.”
Both UFT Treasurer Mel Aaronson and Sandra March, the other teacher members of the TRS board, have endorsed Romain, saying they have “full confidence” in her.
Romain was an important part of the team that achieved the 55/25 agreement.
Endorsement petitions must be returned to the UFT by March 31.
Romain has had extensive experience in the pension field, having worked on pension matters since the early 1980s. She is a graduate of the Pension Trustee Education Program of the Wharton School of Business and has served as a special representative in the union’s pension department since 1990. Romain’s expertise has been recognized by her election to the Executive Board of the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement systems.
She was elected assistant secretary of the union in 1996 and assistant treasurer in 2001. Her responsibilities include training new pension consultants, conducting pension workshops during and after school, running pension clinics and tax-deferred annuity workshops, and serving as co-editor of the PensioNews newsletter and as co-author of the “Secure Your Future” column in the New York Teacher.
Romain won the UFT’s Smallheiser Award for service to members in 1992 and in 2004 she won the prestigious David Wittes Award for her leadership in pension and retirement matters.
A teacher since 1971, she taught mathematics at JHS 246 in Brooklyn and later at Samuel Tilden HS.
Romain has been an active UFT member, serving as delegate to both the UFT Delegate Assembly and the Representative Assembly of NYSUT, the union’s statewide affiliate.
She is also a member of NYSUT’s Pension and Retirement Committee and of the UFT’s Pension Committee.
