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New York City’s teachers union is pushing for substantial raises for paraprofessionals, an effort to address shortages of the classroom aides who serve students with disabilities.
But in an unusual maneuver, the union wants to secure those pay bumps through legislation rather than in the traditional contract bargaining process — an effort that generated pushback from City Hall and even some paraprofessionals.
A handful of City Council members said Thursday they plan to introduce a bill soon that would mandate annual pay increases of at least $10,000 for paraprofessionals, also known as paras. The starting salary for paras is just shy of $32,000 a year, about half of what regular classroom teachers earn. The raises would cost about $260 million a year, said Rita Joseph, who chairs City Council’s education committee.
“It is becoming more and more difficult for us to recruit and retain what I consider to be the essential piece of special education, which is the paraprofessional,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents city educators.
Advancing legislation to boost para pay represents the latest salvo in the union’s campaign to call attention to special education staffing shortages. There are more than 1,600 unfilled para positions, according to figures the Education Department shared with the City Council. In the fall, there were about 23,564 active paraprofessionals, a nearly 8% decline since June 2020.
The lack of staff can have devastating implications for students with disabilities. In some cases, students are not able to participate in job training programs or attend mainstream classes because there is no staffer to accompany them. In extreme cases, some students have not been able to attend school at all because they are not allowed to ride a yellow bus without a dedicated aide.
The push to increase pay for paraprofessionals comes as Mulgrew is up for re-election this year and some of the educators who hope to unseat him have called attention to the pay disparities.
The union chief said the city has been unwilling to give paras significant raises in contract negotiations without asking other members of the union to accept smaller pay bumps to finance it. The union typically adheres to “pattern bargaining” in which municipal unions agree to similar pay increases, which Mulgrew said limits their ability to secure more significant raises for paras.
Union officials said they were unaware of any previous efforts to secure wage increases for city union workers through legislation.
Some union activists who oppose the union’s leadership said the move may be an effort to help shore up votes, as the union has faced bruising battles over health care and the union leader won his last election with a smaller margin than usual.
“I don’t understand why [Mulgrew is] presenting this in a bill with some council members when he had the opportunity to fight for this in our contract negotiations,” said Marie Wausnock, a union executive board member who co-founded a slate called Fix Para Pay which largely opposes Mulgrew’s Unity caucus. She noted the pay bumps Mulgrew is pushing for would not count toward their pensions.
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams indicated that any pay increases should be bargained in regular contract negotiations and noted paras received raises under a contract deal reached in 2023 and which runs until 2027.
“Paraprofessionals are crucial in the educational experience of our families, and we recognize the importance of ensuring fair compensation for all members of our educational workforce,” City Hall spokesperson Allison Maser wrote in an email. “We look forward to discussing all of the union’s economic demands in the next round of collective bargaining.”
The proposed legislation already has some support. A handful of lawmakers rallied Thursday morning in front of City Hall to press their case for it.
“We can solve this issue with an investment in this workforce that is so needed,” said City Council member Carmen De La Rosa.
Local lawmakers said they intend to push for funding during negotiations for next school year’s budget, which wrap up by the end of June. They did not immediately provide text of the legislation or say when it would be introduced.
Some longtime observers of city education politics said the effort to pass legislation could largely be about generating pressure to ink a better deal for paras in the future, said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
“It seems a distraction from the union’s failure to bargain for this small exception to the city’s preferred pattern of union wages,” he wrote in an email.
Still, Bloomfield acknowledged the union has won some major legislative victories, including a state law that requires significantly smaller class sizes in city schools.
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
