{"id":7291,"date":"2026-08-24T09:36:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=7291"},"modified":"2026-08-24T09:36:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:36:03","slug":"dont-let-the-the-uft-fleece-taxpayers-via-teacher-aide-bonuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=7291","title":{"rendered":"Don’t let the the UFT fleece taxpayers via teacher-aide bonuses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council are going to war in court over payments to Department of Education paraprofessionals \u2014 even though they agreed on the issue not long ago.<\/p>\n

Read more Are they Democrat socialists or just deadbeat scammers?<\/a><\/p>\n

At a 2025 press conference where the 200,000-member\u00a0teachers\u2019 union endorsed him, Mamdani touted his support for giving paraprofessionals $10,000 checks.<\/p>\n

Last month, the council unanimously passed the union-driven and branded \u201cRespect for Paraprofessionals\u201d bill, at an expected cost of $325 million.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, however, didn\u2019t sign or veto it but instead let it become law automatically,\u00a0citing concerns about its legality. Hours later, his lawyers\u00a0ran to court to block it.<\/p>\n

Whether paraprofessionals deserve more pay isn\u2019t the issue. Virtually everyone can agree that they do very difficult work, and a starting salary of about $33,000 doesn\u2019t go far in the highest cost-of-living city in the nation.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake goes to the heart of how the city hires and pays its employees.<\/p>\n

Under the state Taylor Law, public employers and unions bargain collectively over wages, benefits and work rules. Collective bargaining is imperfect, but it\u2019s the lawful process.<\/p>\n

The United Federation of Teachers\u2019 members, which includes both teachers and paraprofessionals, agreed<\/em> in 2023 to a contract that did little to address paras\u2019 low pay.<\/p>\n

The 2023 contract, for example, cut the time for a teacher to earn a $100,000 salary from 15 to 8 years. But it didn\u2019t revise the paraprofessionals\u2019 pay scale.<\/p>\n

UFT President Michael Mulgrew reasoned that\u00a0paras could get more only if teachers took less \u2014 a tradeoff the union has declined.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s sought to strike a better deal for its large teacher membership and then separately have the council <\/em>boost salaries for the paras.<\/p>\n

The trouble is, in sidestepping collective bargaining, the new law threatens to open the door to multiple ways for unions to win pay hikes.<\/p>\n

Once they finish bargaining with the mayor, they\u2019ll run to the council and negotiate additional<\/em> payments.<\/p>\n

Neither side will want to appear stingier than the other, so the union is effectively trying to engineer a spending arms race \u2014 taxpayers and fiscal consequences be damned.<\/p>\n

It was obviously irresponsible for Mamdani to back the legislation on the campaign trail; funny that his doubts about its legality didn\u2019t surface then.<\/p>\n

But the council should\u2019ve known better than to upset the six decades of accepted labor practice.<\/p>\n

That every member present voted for the bill shows the extent of UFT\u2019s stranglehold over the city\u2019s education system.<\/p>\n

Read more Florida female pilot who made emergency landing in Atlantic Ocean says she\u2019s \u2018incredibly fortunate\u2019 to swim away from crash<\/a><\/p>\n

The council justifies the payment as helping fill 1,600 paraprofessional vacancies.<\/p>\n

Students legally entitled to one-on-one support can wait months for the city to provide it, while the city pays far higher rates when it fails to provide them.<\/p>\n

But the bonuses would hardly recruit many more aides.<\/p>\n

Almost all of it would go to the roughly 25,000 paraprofessionals already employed, while any incentive to stay would vanish once the checks stop.<\/p>\n

There are far better ways for the mayor and council to address the problem.<\/p>\n

First, education officials should determine whether requests for paraprofessionals genuinely reflect student needs; standards should be consistent across the five boroughs.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the\u00a0city\u2019s budget office reported\u00a0that officials recommend paraprofessionals for students at rates that vary widely by borough; an aide for a Staten Island student with autism, for example, was nearly twice as likely to be recommended as one for the average student citywide.<\/p>\n

Officials should also fix the broken process to hire paraprofessionals.<\/p>\n

Candidates cannot simply apply; per DOE\u2019s own careers page, applications \u201care only made available to people who have been nominated by a school principal.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means someone interested in the job must contact individual schools and find a principal willing to nominate them based on their staffing needs.<\/p>\n

Everyone else may fill out an interest survey, but the DOE warns that \u201cdoes not guarantee a nomination.\u201d<\/p>\n

And weeks before the new school year begins, nominations are closed, per the DOE\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

That means someone looking to become a paraprofessional cannot apply right now.<\/p>\n

Nominees then go through assessments, fingerprinting, workshops and an exam before they become substitutes.<\/p>\n

And after that, they must work at least 25 days and earn the required state certificate before becoming eligible for a full-time paraprofessional appointment.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The DOE should, at the least, let qualified candidates apply without first securing a principal\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n

And when the UFT contract expires next year and Mamdani and Mulgrew resume collective bargaining, the two parties should address paraprofessionals\u2019 salary.<\/p>\n

The court will now decide whether paraprofessionals get the payout the council passed.<\/p>\n

But even if they do, it\u2019ll be just a Band-Aid that leaves the system still sorely in need of repair.<\/p>\n

Read more Zelensky details rift with Ukraine\u2019s dismissed Defense Minister Fedorov<\/a><\/p>\n

Jennifer Weber and John Ketcham are fellows at the Manhattan Institute<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council are going to war in court over $10,000 bonuses payments to Department of Education paraprofessionals \u2014 even though they agreed on the issue not long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't let the the UFT fleece taxpayers via teacher-aide bonuses - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=7291\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Don't let the the UFT fleece taxpayers via teacher-aide bonuses - 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