NEW YORK – A new website backed by television anchor turned education reformer Campbell Brown is highlighting teacher union spending on lavish accommodations, luxury travel, and other extravagances.

The website “The Seventy Four” – a reference to America’s 74 million student population – reviewed financial documents filed with the U.S. Labor Department between 2011 and 2014 by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the nation’s two largest teachers unions.

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A resulting report details how the AFT spent “more than $1.3 million on luxury hotels, more than $300,000 on foreign travel and an eye-popping $59,368 on car services” at a time when the average teacher salary barely cracks $50,000.

The NEA also spent a lot on seemingly unnecessary expenses – from $2.2 million in travel to lavish resorts to $15,000 in “entertainment” costs – during the same time frame.

According to the site:

In one year alone, between July 2013 and June 2014, the AFT spent $63,795 on Air France, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Air New Zealand and EVA Airways, the Taiwanese international airline, according to the union’s financial records.

In previous years, the union has spent thousands to fly on Air Canada, Korean Airlines, Thai Airways and South African Airway, and to book lodging at such international properties as the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel In Tokyo, Japan and Hotel Kamp Helsinki in Finland among others. …

Between July 2011 and June 2012, the union spent nearly $10,000 at the Rosewood London, a restored Edwardian mansion which boasts rooms with Italian bedding, premier restaurants, a spa and complimentary trainers for the gym, among other features.

The next year the union spent more than $7,000 at The Ritz-Carlton in Santiago, Chile, which lures visitors with pictures of rooftop lounges, pools, massage rooms and residential-style suites.

Other AFT expenses included more than $320,000 in member dues money spent at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel, $6,700 spent at Walt Disney World and $43,700 spent at the Buena Vista Palace Hotel & Spa in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. between July 2012 and June 2013, The Seventy Four reports.

NEA brass spent on similar extravagant expenses at resorts in Las Vegas, Miami and San Diego, as well as flights on Air Singapore, South African Airways, Air France and other international airlines, though some of it was in connection to global activities coordinated through “Educational International.”

In total, the AFT and NEA spent $334 million and $352 million, respectively, in 2014.

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The Seventy Four also pointed out substantial spending by local union affiliates on movie and sports games tickets, over-the-top retirement luncheons, car services, and travel to fancy hotels and resorts. EAGnews has repeatedly pointed to similar runaway spending by teachers unions and public school districts across the country in numerous reports dating back to 2007.

The report is underpinned by what’s undoubtedly one of the unions’ biggest budget items: political spending.

“The AFT and the National Education Association spent $26 million on the 2012 elections, according to The Center for Responsive Politics.”

“There are desperate needs in our public schools, yet teacher union bosses feel entitled to spend millions of member’s coerced fees on lavish travel and accommodations under the guise of ‘collective bargaining,’” Rebecca Friedrichs, lead plaintiff in a Supreme Court lawsuit challenging teachers unions’ ability to force workers to join, told EAGnews.

The 28-year Orange County teacher is among 10 California educators and the Christian Educators Association that are suing the California Teachers Association over compulsory membership fees that are spent on the luxury travel and other questionable expenses.

“Unions collect hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-free coerced fees from teachers who will lose our jobs if we don’t pay up. We pay for 100 percent of their luxuries, 100 percent of their one-sided political agenda, and they use our positive image to manipulate the public into giving them more power and control,” Friedrichs said. “They label us ‘free riders’ if we disagree with this arrangement.

“This is scandalous, and it’s an egregious attack on our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association. Union leadership will continue enjoying their excessive lifestyle without accountability to members as long as they are permitted to coerce fees from middle class Americans,” she said.

Friedrichs, of course, isn’t the only teacher disgusted by her union’s spending.

“It’s our money,” Jade Thompson, an Ohio Spanish teacher who has challenged mandatory union dues in court, told The Seventy Four. “Think what you can do with $800 dollars (a year in union dues). For a lot of working families, that’s a lot of money.”