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Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday urged powerful teachers unions to step up efforts to help increase hiring so that New York City can comply with new state-imposed class size rules.
Hizzoner’s appeal to the teachers union comes a day after Hizzoner’s principal, David Banks, insisted that the city needs to triple its teacher hiring rate to meet class size laws.
“We need the UFT’s help because we have a teacher shortage,” Adams said at a town hall briefing when asked about the assignment.
“We hope the UFT can help us, the day-to-day leaders can help us, help us understand how to attract talent. We have to attract more teachers into the system.”
While the city could try to reduce classroom sizes over the next two years to comply with the law, the mayor said the city still needs help attracting teachers.
“We’re not going to change anything. The law is the law,” Adams said. “We hope to work with the UFT and the department to recruit these teachers.”
A DOE spokesperson told The Washington Post that the city would need to increase hiring by about 8,000 teachers to comply with the requirement, noting that about 4,000 teachers would be hired each year to keep staffing levels the same.
The DOE representative added that the cost of hiring so many teachers would cost the city $120 to $1.8 billion annually.
Banks has repeatedly begged Albany for additional cash to help fund the expensive undertaking — arguing it would burden already tight school budgets.
“We’re facing a national teacher shortage, and in order to meet the requirements of this law, we’re essentially going to have to triple the number of teachers we hire,” Banks said Monday while testifying at a City Council Education Committee budget hearing.
The DOE boss has previously warned that some school projects could be canceled in the coming years as a result of the mandate, adding that the city needs about $20 billion in capital improvements to create extra space for classes.
The law, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022, caps classes at 20 students in kindergarten through third grade; 23 in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in high school.
To meet the requirements of the law, the city must ensure that 20% of classes are capped by the 2023-2024 school year and continue to increase that percentage to reach 100% by 2027-2028.
Asked about Hizzoner’s comments, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement: “It’s great to hear this news. We are always looking for partners to help bring talented new teachers into New York City public schools. Our Students deserve it.”
Still, Rita Joseph, chair of the city council’s education committee, pushed back on the mayor’s call for the UFT to get involved and said it was the Department of Education’s responsibility to create a pipeline to recruit more teachers.
“There’s always a shortage, and I’ve told them many times that they need to create a pipeline to hire educators,” Joseph said at a City Hall news conference on Tuesday.
Adams has called for more union aid to attract more teachers while engaging in an ongoing feud with the powerful UFT as he gains mayoral control of the city’s public schools from Albany.
This comes after the Adams administration last year signed a cushy five-year union contract with the UFT that gave teachers a 20% pay increase.
Additional reporting by Vaughn Golden
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