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Site policies
Legal disclaimer
This website is intended for use by teachers and administrators who are members of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System and the system’s other constituents. The text is in simple language and is meant to provide basic information and answers to the most frequently asked questions about the MTRS, its benefits, services and administration.
The information contained in this website is not intended as a substitute for the Massachusetts General Laws nor will its interpretation prevail should a conflict arise between its contents and M.G.L. c. 32. Rules governing retirement benefits are subject to change periodically either by statute of the Massachusetts Legislature or by regulation of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement Board. If you have any questions about any of this material, please contact our office or seek advice from a professional in the appropriate field.
If you have any comments—pro or con—or suggestions on how we can improve our site, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@trb.state.ma.us.
Privacy policy
A note from the MTRS
Your privacy is very important to us and we will protect it to the
maximum extent allowed by law. You should know, however, that information
you send us via the Internet is not entirely secure; additionally, like
other information you may provide us in a letter or a form, information
you send us online may be provided to a member of the public in response
to a public records request. Please be assured that we use the information
you provide us via your visits to our site, e-mail and online forms solely
to serve you and to conduct MTRS business; we do not sell any mailing lists
or other member information to anyone or any other agencies.
This website is intended for teachers and administrators who are members of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System and the system’s other constituents. In an effort to better serve you, our members, we offer you the opportunity to communicate with us through e-mail and apply or register for various programs using online forms. Your privacy is important to us. However, because some of the information that we receive through this website is subject to the Public Records Law, Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 66, Section 10, as well as regulations of the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission (PERAC), 840 CMR 6.00, we cannot ensure absolute privacy. Accordingly, part or all of the information you send us may be provided to a member of the public in response to a public records request. This policy is meant to inform you of the information that we collect from you at this site, what we do with it, and to whom it may be disseminated and under what circumstances. Based on this information, you can make an informed choice about your use of this site, specifically about whether to share personally identifiable information with us through this site.
Information voluntarily provided by you
This site collects voluntary information from you through the e-mails
that you send through this site, as well as through e-mail
forms. The information sent by you to this site will contain personally
identifiable information.
Information automatically collected and stored
by this site
This site does not collect “cookies.” However,
as our site is hosted on the state server, your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address is
collected; this address does not identify you as an individual. We use your
IP address simply to assess the frequency of visits to this site and the popularity
of its various pages and functions for statistical purposes only. We will not
attempt to match any personally identifiable
information that you provide to us with your IP address, unless there are
reasonable grounds to believe that doing so would provide information that
is relevant and material to a criminal investigation.
For more information about cookies, please visit this site: http://www.cookiecentral.com/faq/
Dissemination of your personally identifiable
information
We do not sell any personally identifiable
information collected through this website. However, once you voluntarily
submit personally identifiable information to us through an e-mail or through
one of our forms, its dissemination is governed by the Public
Records Law, the Massachusetts
General Laws Chapter 66A (Fair Information Practices Act), Executive
Order 412, 840 CMR
6.00, and other applicable laws and regulations. For this reason, part
or all of the information you send us may be provided to a member of the public
in response to a public records request.
In addition, the information that you voluntarily submit will be disclosed only to MTRS employees or officials on a “need to know” basis for purposes of fulfilling their job responsibilities. We will only use the information to answer your questions, respond to any requests, and fulfill the MTRS’s legal obligations.
Your access and opportunity to correct
You have certain rights to get information about you that is in our records.
To learn more about this, please visit web pages regarding the Public
Records Law and the Fair
Information Practices Act. Also, please see regulation 840 CMR 6.07 of
the Public Employee Retirement Administration
Commission’s (PERAC).
Security
The MTRS cannot guarantee or ensure the privacy, confidentiality and/or security
of any e-mail submitted via this website. Because this site does not encrypt
incoming e-mail, please do not include information that you consider highly
confidential in your messages. Also, because our on-line applications are e-mail
forms, we avoid asking for information that we consider highly
confidential, such as Social Security Numbers and medical information.
However, we do use standard security measures to ensure that your personally identifiable information is not lost, misused, or altered. For your protection, software programs are used regularly to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits.
If you do wish to inquire about a matter that requires the inclusion of personal or confidential information, or feel uncomfortable submitting information to us over the Internet, please call us or submit your question or application to us via U.S mail.
Special protections against misuse of personally
identifiable information within Commonwealth offices
In 1999, then-Acting Governor Swift issued Executive
Order 412, which enhanced the privacy protection given to any information
about you as a named individual held by the Executive Department of state government. Executive
Order 412 limits the collection and dissemination of personally identifiable
information within the Executive Department. This site complies with Executive
Order 412, so all of the personally identifiable
information that you submit to this site is given the privacy protections
set forth in Executive Order 412.
Policy changes
We will post changes to this policy at least 30 days before they take effect.
Any information we collect under the current privacy policy will remain subject
to the terms of this policy. After any changes take effect, all new information
we collect, if any, will be subject to the new policy.
More information
For questions about your privacy while using this website, please contact
General Counsel, James H. Salvie, at james.salvie@trb.state.ma.us.
For more information about personal privacy on the Internet, please visit the “Privacy Initiatives” section of the Federal Trade Commission’s website: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/index.html.
External links
The links to external sources in this website are not intended to reflect the importance of those sources or to endorse any views expressed or products or services offered by those sources.
The Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement Board (MTRB) may, at its discretion, link to sites owned, operated, or sponsored by the following entities:
- state, federal, and local governmental entities;
- associations of government professionals; and
- private, nonprofit entities provided that:
1) the MTRS has a noncommercial relationship with the entity, such as membership, sponsorship, or research partnership; and
2) the entity does not engage in lobbying or political activity as its principal activity.
3) Entities acting as agents for the MTRS to perform specific searches.
The MTRS is not responsible for and does not in any way guarantee the accuracy of information in other sites accessible through links herein.
While we attempt to provide links to sites that will be of use to consumers, the links to sites beyond the MTRS’s site do not constitute an endorsement by the MTRS or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. These links are provided for convenience only.
Accessibility
The Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System is committed to achieving meaningful accessibility to this online environment for all users, including users with disabilities. We follow specific Commonwealth Web Accessibility Standards designed to meet the needs of our citizens with disabilities. The Commonwealth enterprise standards are generally based on standards used by the Federal government for technology accessibility for people with disabilities, and web content accessibility guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For more information about the Federal standards, please visit the Section 508 website (http://www.section508.gov) or the Federal Access Board website (http://www.access-board.gov). For more information about the W3C guidelines, please visit their website (http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT). The Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System’s website is regularly tested using leading web accessibility technologies and reviewed by users to verify that this website is compliant with applicable standards.
About portable document format (PDF)
Some documents on this website are produced in portable document
format (pdf). Efforts are currently underway to ensure that all files are
produced using the latest version of Acrobat (file conversion software
for pdfs), which is the most accessible technology currently available
for these types of files. In order to improve viewing of these files, please
download the latest version of Adobe Reader, which is available for free
at the Adobe website (http://www.adobe.com).
However, recognizing that even this version does not always work for all users, alternative accessible formats are provided wherever possible, most commonly through a text or an HTML file.
Contact information
If any file format prevents you from accessing the information,
please contact us for assistance. In order to respond in a manner most
helpful to you, please note the nature of your accessibility concern, the
format in which you prefer to receive the material, the web page address
of the requested material, and the best way to contact you.
We also welcome your questions about this accessibility statement and comments on how to improve the site’s accessibility.
Please contact us at our main office, One Charles Park, Cambridge, MA 02142-1206, 617-679-MTRS, or by e-mail at webmaster@trb.state.ma.us.
IMPORTANT: Only messages regarding technical accessibility will be answered at the above phone or email addresses. All other questions should be sent to geninfo@trb.state.ma.us.
Definitions
We use the term “personally identifiable information” to mean any information that could reasonably be used to identify you, including your name, address, e-mail address, birth date, or any combination of information that could be used to identify you.
Cookies are files that a website can place on your computer. A cookie file contains unique information that a website can use to track such things as your password, lists of web pages you have visited, and the date when you last looked at a specific web page, or to identify your session at a particular website. A cookie file allows the website to recognize you as you click through pages on the site and when you later revisit the site. A website can use cookies to “remember” your preferences, and to record your browsing behavior on the web. Although you can prevent website from placing cookies on your computer by using your browser’s preference menu, disabling cookies may affect your ability to view or interact with some website.
An “Internet Protocol Address” or “IP Address” is a series of numbers that identifies each computer and machine connected to the Internet. An IP address enables a server on a computer network to send you the file that you have requested on the Internet. The IP address disclosed to us may identify the computer from which you are accessing the Internet, or a server owned by your Internet Service Provider. Because it is machine-specific, rather than person-specific, an IP address is not, in and of itself, personally identifiable information.
An e-mail form is a type of HTML form that transfers the data entered using standard e-mail. Therefore, any information submitted using this type of application is not entirely secure. If you are uncomfortable submitting information over the Internet using this type of application, we encourage you to complete a paper copy of the form and send it to the MTRS by regular U.S. mail.