Retirement – Teacher – Purchase of service

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Where the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System denied a petitioner’s application to purchase creditable service, that decision should be affirmed because the positions for which the petitioner seeks to purchase creditable service were not full-time.

“The petitioner, Bo Feng, appeals MTRS’s denial of his application to purchase creditable service. …

“Mr. Feng represented himself, testified, and called Suhong Chang as a witness, who, like Mr. Feng, had been a Teaching Assistant as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass). …

“Mr. Feng was variously a graduate student, teaching assistant, student worker, and adjunct professor at UMass. …

“Mr. Feng’s various positions were not full-time. He did not testify or present exhibits that the positions for which he seeks to purchase creditable service were full-time. … Therefore, Mr. Feng cannot purchase creditable service. …

“Mr. Feng argued in his post-hearing brief: ‘To deny credit for this substantial period of public service solely because archival hiring forms are no longer available would ignore the reliable payroll evidence and penalize me for administrative record limitations beyond my control.’

“Mr. Feng’s argument fails for several reasons. One, MTRS properly denied his application to purchase creditable service and it was not ‘solely,’ or even partly, because documents are no longer available. Two, no one is ignoring reliable payroll records. The records do not speak for themselves, as the expression goes. Mr. Feng did not call a witness to interpret the records. He did not try to explain them himself. I am faced with pages and pages, rows and rows, and columns and columns of barely explicable information …, information that if it were explicable would almost certainly not prove what Mr. Feng needs to prove, namely, that he worked full-time. Three, no one is penalizing Mr. Feng. This appeal is his case to make, Bagley v. Contributory Retirement Appeal Board, 397 Mass. 255, 258 (1986), as I explained to him at the hearing. His inability to prove his case and obtain a benefit is not a penalty. Four, I know of no law or other requirement that governmental entities maintain records that will allow petitioners, decades later, to support their applications to purchase creditable service. Mr. Feng has brought no such law or other requirement to my attention. Mr. Feng, himself and no one else, did not retain all documents that he considered relevant. …

“MTRS’s denial of Mr. Feng’s application to purchase creditable service is affirmed.”

Feng v. Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System (Lawyers Weekly No. 27-010-26) (5 pages) (Bresler, Administrative Magistrate) (Division of Administrative Law Appeals) Bo Feng, pro se; James O’Leary for the respondent (Docket No. CR-23-0316) (Jan. 23, 2026).

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