Regular MA public school teaching service

This service is credited through your school’s monthly deduction reporting. Note: If you previously rendered MA public school service, and then left and took a refund of your MTRS account, you may “buy back” your prior service credit (this is known as a “refund buyback”). See Other MA public service.

Regular service is earned by all teachers and administrators who are employed on at least a half-time basis and who are contributing members of the MTRS. If you are employed on a full-time basis, you will earn one year of creditable service for each contract year you complete. For service rendered on or after 7/9/2010, service rendered on less than a full-time basis will earn an amount of regular service credit which equals their percentage of full-time employment.

For information on how part-time service is credited, see Part-time “membership” service.

Authorized leaves of absence, including sabbaticals

For paid leaves, you will be credited based on the length of your leave and amount of compensation received, as documented by you and your school district; for unpaid leaves, you may receive up to one month of credit.

You will receive creditable service depending on how you were compensated during your leave. If you received:

  • full compensation, you will receive full service credit.
  • partial compensation, you will receive prorated service credit.
  • no compensation (an unpaid leave), you will receive either the exact number of days of your leave if it was for one month or less, or one month of service if it was for longer than one month.

Please note:

  • Paid sabbaticals, regardless of when they were rendered, will always be prorated to reflect the percentage at which they were paid. For example, a sabbatical at 75 percent pay will be credited as 0.75 year of service.
  • Two or more consecutive leaves of absence will be treated as one leave. For example, school districts often allow leaves of absence in one-year increments and require educators who wish to take two-year leaves to reapply after the first year of the leave. In these cases, the two-year or more leave is counted as one leave of absence, and credited as noted above.

Military leave of absence during your membership in a MA contributory retirement system

If you rendered active military service in the middle of your Massachusetts public service career, generally you may be eligible to receive credit for a maximum of four years of your time in the military. Please note that if you qualify, the cost of this service is borne by the school district or municipality; you do not have to pay for this time.

To qualify, you must have been an active member of a Massachusetts contributory retirement system immediately prior to entering military service, and, within two years of your discharge or release, you must have returned to membership service. While you were in the military, your local school district or municipality should have been making contributions to the retirement system you belonged to prior to your military service. If such contributions were not made, we will bill the municipality on your behalf for the contributions that should have been made to the retirement system.