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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Michael Mulgrew, President of United Federation of Teachers
6:50:31
ยท
3 min
Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers, testified about education funding challenges and staffing issues in NYC public schools. He highlighted concerns about potential federal budget cuts, class size reduction efforts, and the critical shortage of paraprofessionals for special needs students.
- Emphasized the need for increased funding and changes to the foundation aid formula
- Reported progress on class size reduction compliance but noted ongoing challenges
- Urged support for a paraprofessional pay equity bill to address severe staffing shortages for special needs students
- Criticized the city's pattern bargaining practices, which have led to pay inequity for paraprofessionals over time
Michael Mulgrew
6:50:31
Good afternoon, and thank you, chair.
6:50:33
And I do appreciate, you having, these hearings in such an important time.
6:50:38
Two days this week, we've spent in Albany just lobbying on behalf of the city of New York and on behalf for our school system.
6:50:44
And I will reiterate some of the messaging I I used up there.
6:50:49
We have prepared and have coordinated all sorts of contingencies now about any sort of federal action that will do anything to our schools.
6:50:58
That includes Medicaid Medicaid cuts that would all automatically become education cuts, and people need to be aware of that.
6:51:05
But here for and we were happy to see that both the assembly and the senate started realizing and started moving in a better direction in terms of the actual funding for our school system because of a change in the waiting on the formula for foundation aid.
6:51:17
But I also wanna talk about a couple of other things quickly.
6:51:21
Our our programs, as always, thank you for your partnership, and you you everybody in city council is always welcome to come and see their dollars at work actually with children and teachers because that's where it should be.
6:51:33
Class size, we are working with the Department of Education.
6:51:37
There are always challenges, but I am happy to report that those challenges seem to be getting worked out, but there are going to be more coming into the future.
6:51:44
But more importantly, right now, it's the biggest problem we're having, which is our special needs with our our inability to even staff the needs of the students of New York City.
6:51:54
I wanna thank people in city council working on our paraprofessional in, equity bill because we cannot fix this through collective bargaining.
6:52:03
And right now, even though we were able to get because of our political pressure and actions of parents and elected officials, and five different hiring halls for paraprofessionals, we were able to hire over 1,500 paraprofessionals, but we're still over 1,500 short.
6:52:17
And I wanna put that in perspective for everybody.
6:52:20
That means every day in New York City public schools are over 1,500 students who do not have a paraprofessional.
6:52:26
That means we're out of compliance, but compliance is the least of the problem.
6:52:30
The problem is that child is in distress and has even greater challenges in the process of their education on that day, and it's not fair to the students, and it's not fair to their parents.
6:52:41
And the issue is has become very clear.
6:52:44
The the pay is not it's just not enough to any for people to live in New York City.
6:52:53
It's not enough, and the the wages are too low.
6:52:56
And I know people have responded to us, well, that's a union collective bargaining issue.
6:53:00
Well, it's not when the city continues to adhere to a practice known as patent bargaining, and it will only give raises based on percentages.
6:53:07
And our paraprofessionals for over twenty years, those percentages have created a pay and equity gap because they have less buying power now than they did twenty five years ago as compared to the other titles in our school system.
6:53:19
So we are looking to create a program, a program outside of collective bargaining that will allow us to to start to work with the city to say, number one, we have to solve the problem of the paras, and number two, we need to change the practices of collective bargaining because this should never be happening to any low wage workers no matter what union they are in in the city Of New York.
6:53:44
Thank you.