Testimony of UFT President Michael Mulgrew submitted before the New York City Council Education Committee

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Mulgrew, and I am the president of the United Federation of Teachers. On behalf of our union’s over 190,000 members, I want to thank Chair Joseph and the Education Committee for holding this incredibly important hearing today.

This morning, I stood with City Council Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph, Labor Committee Chair Carmen De La Rosa, and Council Members Julie Menin and Crystal Hudson as they proposed legislation that would put an additional $10,000 into the pockets of paraprofessionals not just this year, but in subsequent years as well. Substitute paraprofessionals would receive this payment on a pro rata basis.

This legislation is an overdue remedy to the gross disparity that has arisen due to the Department of Education’s (DOE) long-term reliance on the practice of pattern bargaining – providing percentage-based increases in pay to employees. This practice not only locks in historical disparities in pay, but it compounds them, reducing the buying power of certain titles like paraprofessionals. Consider a starting paraprofessional, who makes just under $32,000 a year, and the highest-paid principal, who makes close to $217,000 annually. When they both receive their 3% raise, the paraprofessional receives roughly $900, while the principal receives roughly $6,500. As salaries continue to grow, so does the discrepancy in buying power among titles.

Respecting, recruiting and retaining paraprofessionals in New York City is paramount. Paraprofessionals are the backbone of our public schools. They are often the very first educators that our children with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) see every day, meeting students at their homes and putting them on the school bus. They feed the students who cannot feed themselves and physically guide the hands of students who struggle to write. When a lesson is overwhelming or moving too fast, it is the paraprofessional who breaks it down into bite-size pieces for their assigned student, allowing them to grasp the material at their own pace. Paraprofessionals give their students the confidence they need to join in group work and form friendships that allow them to thrive. Imagine if all of the 26,000 paraprofessionals in our schools took two days off in a row. How would our schools function? The answer is: They wouldn’t.

That is why the UFT has been relentless in our efforts to address the special education staffing shortages that plagued New York City at the beginning of this school year. This academic year began with thousands of special education students in our city not receiving the services they were legally entitled to, simply because of a massive shortage of paraprofessionals, occupational and physical therapists, and other school-related professionals. When asked about the extent of the staffing shortages, DOE officials threw up their hands and claimed they didn’t have precise figures. To our union and its members, this was utterly unacceptable, and we refused to sit by while the children of this city — our children — suffered.

To get answers and determine which areas of the city were suffering the most, we conducted our own survey. Eighty-one percent of NYC’s 1,629 traditional public schools and District 75 special education sites responded to our survey, and we found that there were more than 2,200 special education vacancies across nearly 474 schools — with almost 1,600 of those being paraprofessional vacancies. With this alarming information, the UFT held a press conference highlighting the great need for staff and services in our city. The very same day that we held this conference, DOE officials suddenly named hiring paraprofessionals as a top priority.

The UFT kicked into high gear. We held a “How to Become a Paraprofessional” training, with over 400 attendees, that outlined the process for seeking principal nominations and how to proceed once those nominations were received. We launched a social media campaign to advertise hiring fairs where candidates could receive principal nominations, which we held in four out of our five borough offices, in partnership with the DOE. The UFT continued to support candidates throughout the entire tedious and confusing hiring process. Once nominations were given out, the DOE provided us with a list of 950 nominees who hadn’t completed their applications, and the UFT called every single one of them to ensure they had what they needed to complete those applications. As a result of our efforts, hundreds of paraprofessionals have been nominated and hired. The UFT will continue to host fairs and work with the DOE until our schools and students are fully covered.

We will also continue to advocate for targeted recruitment efforts in areas like District 27, near the beach in Far Rockaway, that have historically low staffing rates for paraprofessionals due to a lack of public transportation. In the past, we have approached this challenge by reaching out to qualified members of the community who wouldn’t have to travel far to work in these schools, with UFT members hanging flyers in community centers to share these opportunities. These are the types of creative, action-oriented solutions that we encourage the DOE to take. We believe that solutions such as these, coupled with increased pay and respect for our paraprofessionals, will help prevent future staffing crises.

While there has been action taken to hire more paraprofessionals, we are at a standstill when it comes to using school-based Occupational and Physical Therapists to serve students. The DOE sought, through collective bargaining, the addition of a ninth period for these professionals to provide mandated services to more students — a change that took effect in June 2023. Yet the DOE continues to outsource and contract out for these services because they cannot figure out how to pay the therapists already in school buildings. Outsourcing comes with serious delays in service and moves services from inside the school building to alternate, often inconvenient locations. All this means that our students with special needs are denied countless therapy sessions.

Staffing shortages and a lack of services are not the only problems within our city’s broken special education system. In recent years, there has been an overreliance on the principle of educating students in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE), pushing the DOE to focus more on where special education students are educated than how they are educated. The DOE made a commitment to serving students closest to their home-zoned schools, even when that is not the most appropriate educational setting for students. This has resulted in the DOE moving District 75 seats to community schools that do not have adequate training or resources to support District 75 students with high levels of academic and behavioral need.

Recently, students have also been forced into multiyear (bridge) classes that span two or three grades. In these classes, students are thrown together with no rhyme or reason, other than having disabilities that are so severe they cannot be placed in integrated co-teaching (ICT) settings. These students might be close in age, but their academic and behavioral needs span a wide range. Not only does this type of educational setting harm students, but it creates immense challenges for their teachers, who are forced to teach the curricula of multiple grades and manage a vast array of students’ needs all at once. This is not educationally sound.

Additionally, ICT classes are failing to adequately educate the largest group of students with disabilities in NYC: students with learning, speech, and language disabilities. The ICT model is not designed to address deficits in literacy and math past the 3^rd grade and requires intensive supplemental interventions to fill these deficits for students with significant learning disabilities. However, the DOE fails to recommend this service for students, and also fails to hire and train enough teachers through Special Education Teacher Support Services (SETSS), so they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to deliver these supplemental interventions. This leaves many of our students without a proper education.

We see the shortcomings of our special education system reflected in the city’s increased spending on Carter cases and private programs for students with disabilities. Last year, the city spent a record $1.35 billion to cover the cost of private schools and programs for students with disabilities who aren’t being appropriately served in public schools. Only by correctly serving students can the DOE hope to break this legal cycle, which redirects public school dollars to private institutions and providers.

To address the issues mentioned in this testimony, we recommend that the DOE:

• Fund and staff all vacancies with full-time therapists and educators.
• Ensure that adequate numbers of paraprofessionals are hired before the school year begins, to properly serve all students who require IEP paraprofessionals and special classes. Also, streamline the paraprofessional hiring process.
• Place students in the least restrictive environment that matches their specific educational needs. The LRE looks different for every student, and the DOE must base their recommendations for educational settings on what each student needs.
• Ensure that students in ICT classes and in every school have access to SETSS teachers equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to deliver intensive interventions and instruction in reading and math.

Once again, I thank you for holding this hearing and examining our special education system. I look forward to our ongoing collaboration as we all serve the children of New York City.