UFT ‘HIRE POWER’
Eric: Help us find teachers
Mayor Adams on Tuesday urged the powerful teachers union to step up and help boost recruitment so the city can comply with the new stateenforced class-size mandate.
Hizzoner called out the United Federation of Teachers a day after Schools Chancellor David Banks insisted the Big Apple will need to triple its rate of hiring teachers.
“We need help from UFT because we have a teacher-shortage issue,” Adams said during a City Hall briefing when asked about the mandate.
“We want the UFT to help us, everyday leaders to help us, on how are we going to attract people in. We have to attract more teachers into the system.”
While the Big Apple can manage to reduce classrooms sizes to comply with the law over the next two years, the mayor said the city still needs help to attract teachers.
“We are not looking to modify anything. The law is the law,” Adams said. “We want to partner with the UFT and Department [of Education] in the recruitment of these teachers.”
The city would need to boost recruitment by roughly 8,000 to comply with the mandate, a DOE rep told The Post, noting that approximately 4,000 teachers are hired in a given year to maintain staffing levels.
The price tag of hiring that many teachers would set the city back between $1.2 and $1.8 billion annually, the rep added.
Banks has repeatedly begged Albany for additional cash to help fund the costly mandate — arguing it will put a burden on the already strapped city school budget.
“We’re in the middle of a national teacher shortage and we basically have to triple the amount of teachers that we are hiring in order to meet this law,” Banks said Monday as he testified before the City Council’s Education Committee budget hearing.
The DOE bigwig, who has previously warned some school programs could be axed in coming years because of the mandate, added the city needed $20 billion for capital improvements to create the additional space for classes.
The law, signed by Gov. Hochul in 2022, places a 20-student max cap on kindergarten through third-grade classes; 23 for fourth through eighth grades and 25 for high school.
To meet the requirements of the law, the city must ensure that 20% of classes meet the caps by the 2023-2024 school year and continuously increase the percentage to meet 100% by 2027-2028.
Asked about Hizzoner’s comments, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement: “Glad to hear it. We are always looking for partners to help bring talented new teachers into New York City public schools. Our students deserve it.”
Adams’ calls for greater union assistance to attract more teachers comes amid an ongoing riff with the powerful UFT over his gaining an extension of mayoral control over city public schools from Albany.