Teachers union boss loses 40,000 members, gets a raise

National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel received a huge pay raise this year while the teachers union lost more than 40,000 members.

Van Roekel, who retired this summer, was paid $541,632 during NEA’s fiscal year ending Aug. 31 — a $130,000 increase from last year, driven by a gross salary hike from $306,286 to $429,509. NEA membership dropped from 3,003,885 last August to 2,963,121 this August.

NEA, the nation’s largest labor union, has lost 272,014 members since 2009. The union paid Van Roekel $2.2 million from 2010-2014.

Losing more than a quarter of a million members didn’t keep Van Roekel from getting a huge raise this year, and taking millions of dollars from workers didn’t prevent Van Roekel from being praised by union advocates in a series of videos recorded for an NEA meeting in July.

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