Over the summer, the president of the principals’ union was predicting record levels of retirement. According to new data from the union, however, the number of retirements actually dipped.

Yesterday, the president of the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, Jill Levy, said that although the number of retirements dropped to 142 from 146, a larger proportion of the principals eligible to retire chose to leave.

“We have fewer and fewer people who are eligible to retire. There are fewer and fewer because most of the Tier I people are gone,” she said, referring to the old retirement system that applies only to people who have been working for the Department of Education since the 1970s. “Percentage-wise, more people are retiring.”

Tier I educators can retire when they turn 55 if they have been working for the public school system for at least 25 years. People who entered the system later must be 62 before they’re eligible to retire. The union calculates the year’s retirement figures at the end of September.

“People are exhausted,” Ms. Levy said. “They’ve gone through tremendous change – change in relationships, change in staffing. They’re tired of being micromanaged. They’re tired of being told that they have a greater latitude in their jobs when in fact they have less.”

In addition to losing 142 principals, or about 11% of the total in the city, the system lost 371 assistant principals.

In the 1999-2000 school year, only 17 principals retired. In the 2000-01 school year, the number of retirements jumped to 143. Ms. Levy said the record levels of retirement since then stem from the creation of a merit incentive that counts toward principals’ pensions only if they retire the year they receive them.

As a result, she said, the administrative workforce has become less experienced. As of September 30, there were 671 principals who had been on the job for more than three years, and 580 who had held their titles for less than three years.

Many of the principals are “neophytes,” Ms. Levy said.

“There’s nothing bad about being young and spirited,” she said. “But we don’t have people who are able to deal with problems from experience, from a foundation of experience.”

A spokesman for the Department of Education, Keith Kalb, said the department doesn’t view the bonuses as incentives to retire.

“It’s important to understand that many of our principals are and have been in Tier I of the teachers’ retirement system, the most beneficial tier of the retirement structure,” he said. “It’s hard not to retire when the time comes because you can make approximately 70% to 80% of your salary and also drop into a lower tax bracket.”

He said a 10.9% turnover is “not considered particularly high.”

“Any organization or agency should not be surprised by a 10% turnover in its employees,” the spokesman said.