The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund has reached an agreement in principle with critics who oppose its proposal to offer a money-market fund.
The agreement, which is expected to be formally approved this month, means the joint pension companies, which serve a large number of private schools, can avoid a lengthy hearing process before the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In return, a group of universities, higher-education organizations, and investment companies has won a loosening of tiaa-cref policies regarding the transfer of funds by participants. The critics have objected to the companies’ request for exemptions from certain federal regulations. The exemptions would have enabled tiaa-cref to prevent participants in the pension plans from transferring their retirement funds more freely among the two plans.
The agreement would simplify the process that policyholders use for transferring retirement money to other accounts offered by the giant pension fund or its competitors. It also would give policyholders more authority to elect trustees of the companies.
Teachers at the Groton School in Groton, Mass., say they have two challenges: instilling in minority students a sense of their own self-worth and “humanizing” privileged students by imparting a value system that goes deeper than money, power, and acceptance at the “right” college.
That is the picture of Groton painted by the “Smithsonian World” program, “American Dream at Groton,” scheduled to appear on the Public Broadcasting System on Nov. 21.
The school--whose alumni include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, and Averell Harriman, is attempting to bridge the opportunity gap between the children of America’s upper class and students from very different backgrounds, the program says. The issues the school faces are seen through interviews with faculty, alumni, and students.
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Day School for Boys in Alexandria, Va., will go completely co-educational, over the objections of its counterpart for girls, St. Agnes, school officials have announced.
The 27-member board that oversees schools run by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia voted for the change late last month after a “complex and painful” process, a letter sent to parents and faculty said. (See Education Week, Feb. 10, 1988.)
Diocesan officials said the decision was in response to a decline in the number of school-age children. To enhance cooperation between the two schools, the diocese required that two members of each school’s board sit on the other school’s board.--kg
