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

My name is Michael Mulgrew, and I am the president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). On behalf of the union’s more than 190,000 members, I would like to thank Chair Rita Joseph and all the members of the City Council’s Committee on Education for holding today’s public hearing on the New York City preliminary budget for fiscal year 2025 and the preliminary capital commitment plan. I would also like to thank Speaker Adrienne Adams and Chair Joseph for their leadership during this year’s budget process. Joining me today is Louis Cholden-Brown, special counsel for the union.   

We are asking the City Council to once again work with educators, parents and advocates to prevent the FY25 Budget and Capital Plan from being used as a political football. We are asking you to prevent City Hall from using increased state aid as an excuse to reduce its own investment in our public schools — the old bait and switch or what budget experts call a move to defund vital programs by supplanting education funding.  

Working with public school parents and education advocates, the UFT has helped secure billions in new funding for public education — including lobbying Albany to fully fund Foundation Aid. In addition to this infusion of new funding, the Council estimates that the city will net $3.3 billion in additional surplus above what OMB projected for FY24 and FY25 for a total of over $6 billion. 

Yet despite this infusion of funding available to our city’s schools, we are still debating a budget that shortchanges our students and seeks to undermine the new class-size limits designed to rectify years of inequity. Our state government is committed to fully funding its share of the education budget. Why has the city decided to cut back and use state funding to supplant its contributions?  

Education money from Albany needs to reach the schools. We are pleased that our advocacy, and pending lawsuit, helped persuade City Hall to abandon its next round of proposed budget cuts. Yet the Department of Education has not abandoned its practice of using state funds to replace its own support for our students, a violation of state education law. How can we count on this mayor to steward our schools and balance the books when the budget that we are discussing today has not been voted on yet by the Panel for Educational Policy? 

Ordinary New Yorkers have come to realize that City Hall’s claims of scarcity and impending financial doom are not factual. City Hall’s track record of questionable financial maneuvers can be seen in the swings between drastic budget cuts and miraculous funding restorations — and nowhere more acutely than the budget for the asylum-seeker crisis. In August, the city’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated the cost of the asylum crisis would rise an astounding 177% over the next two years, to $10.82 billion. Now, a mere seven months later, OMB has cut its cost estimates, effective April, by nearly half, to $5.28 billion over two years, after the IBO newly estimated the city would spend $2.4 billion less on asylum seekers than projected in January. OMB also, inexplicably, projected the state would provide $1.24 billion less for the crisis than it has pledged to provide. Recent reports have even exposed that the city has failed to file the appropriate paperwork to receive two-thirds of the funding pledged by the federal government.   

OMB played similar games by underestimating city revenue and overestimating city expenses. OMB has increased its estimate of city-funded revenues in FY24 and FY25 by $4.71 billion since the adoption of the FY24 budget while growing the FY24 budget by $7 billion over the same period. The net result, adjusted for prepayment, is the city will have a $4.8 billion surplus in 2025 if the administration’s other spending projections hold.  

Amidst all this, OMB decreased the DOE’s budget from $32.6 billion to $31.5 billion while underestimating state Foundation Aid by about $300 million and total projected state educational funding by over $400 million.  

New York City has the funding it needs to properly support public education — City Hall has simply chosen not to do so. The UFT is therefore asking the City Council to once again partner with city students, parents, and advocates to reverse the unnecessary budget cuts and invest in our students by:   

• Implementing the class-size law by making sure additional funding reaches the schools, ensuring schools that are currently in compliance with the new class size limits are given the funding needed to stay in compliance, and dedicating additional funding to recruiting and retaining new teachers.  
• Adding critical staff, including social workers, counselors, and school psychologists.  
• Advancing an agenda for career and technical education. 
• Expanding professional development opportunities for educators. 
• Supporting newly arrived migrant students and other newcomers to our school communities.  
• Retrofitting our schools for resilience and accessibility.  
• Sustaining essential education programs that are supported by federal COVID-19 stimulus dollars, including community schools, 3-K, preschool special education, and mental health services.   
• Strengthening the availability of child care and early childhood education by restoring the draconian cuts to 3-K and pre-K and advancing the massively delayed on-site child care for city employees pilot and the numerous pending task forces and advisory boards tackling universal care and coverage.  
• Maintaining and growing UFT programs that work: Teacher Center, United Community Schools, PROSE, Positive Learning Collaborative, and the Member Assistance Program.   
• And though it should go without saying, feeding our students. OMB’s concession that the school food cuts were implemented because of increased student participation, at a time when the city is realizing additional federal funding for these same meals, should shock the conscience, as should the disclosure that these menus have been restored to only 50 schools. Rather than continue this starvation agenda, the DOE should expand the cost-effective and time-efficient cafeteria redesign efforts — $250 million over five years — that will transform all 500 additional middle- and high-school cafeterias.    

Reform the Budget Process  

In January, I called for an end to NYC’s budget soap opera in a New York Daily News op-ed. The central problem is that the current budget process — developed after the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s — allows the mayor to set the terms of the debate. The administration unilaterally determines the spending of billions while local groups and their representatives struggle over the use of millions of dollars. After nearly 50 years, New York’s budget process badly needs an update to make it more democratic and more responsive to the needs of ordinary residents and communities. The mayor recently announced that he has created a panel of outside experts to help guide his administration on budget issues. Their first recommendation should be to bring down the curtain on this annual budget melodrama and insist that the city make honest projections of future revenues and spending.   

We also call upon the Council to work with us to enact urgent reforms to the budget process that will enhance transparency, accountability and consensus. While OMB increased its two-year tax projection by about $3 billion and its four-year estimates by about $7 billion since their last forecast, the Council’s own revenue projections also missed the mark. Over the same less-than-three-month period, the Council increased its own tax revenue forecasts by nearly $5 billion over the next two fiscal years and by almost $11 billion over the next four fiscal years.    

New York City must try to lessen the political shenanigans associated with its budget process. Here are our short-term recommendations to retire the budget scare tactics employed by every administration:    

• Hold consensus economic and revenue forecasting conferences with outside experts, including from the public sector unions, throughout the year and before the release of each financial plan.
• Require the mayor to use revised tax revenue and spending projections for each financial plan rather than relying on months-old data as he did this fall. 
• Synchronize the projections released by municipal monitors so that they don’t lag behind the mayor’s by as much as six weeks.
• Bolster existing charter provisions requiring the mayor to consider alternative revenue estimates submitted by outside entities. 
• Institute recurring PEG monitoring meetings between OMB, budget monitors, and public sector unions.  

The Council should embrace its budgetary terms and condition authority to bar the DOE from attaching funding to the use of specific assessments in elementary schools without regard to the quantity, frequency and efficacy of the assessment or the data it provides and support the UFT in evaluating current elementary school assessment uses, policies and practices to prioritize and reduce the number of assessments being given in our elementary schools. In the budget, the Council should also prohibit the mayor from downwardly adjusting allocations to any specific school mid-year and revise the Fair Student Funding formula to ensure our most vulnerable students have the resources they need to succeed.  

Affordable Housing   

New York cannot become a place where only the very rich can rent an apartment. We have to try something different if we are to keep the teachers, firefighters, nurses, day care workers and all the other ordinary New Yorkers from leaving the state because they can't afford the rent. Community-controlled housing — built and preserved by New Yorkers for New Yorkers — will make our city more affordable, more livable, and more equitable while creating new, high-paying jobs. The UFT stands ready to help make this happen and calls upon the Council to require that all housing programs funded in the capital budget mandate high-road jobs. We call on the Council to pass legislation redefining financial assistance within city economic development laws to include receipt of a benefit due to a change in land-use controls. In addition, the Council should enact the Community Land Act to address root causes of our city’s affordability crisis, combat displacement of low-income New Yorkers, and build collective wealth in Black and brown communities and hold negligent and abusive landlords accountable through landlord licensing legislation that can also tackle the effects of steep rent increases and evictions.  

Civil Rights  

At a time when elected leaders spew vitriol at our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students, the DOE claims that anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies are unfunded mandates inherited from the previous administration. Compliance with Title VI and Title IX as well as NYC’s robust human rights laws are not optional, and the DOE must not be allowed to evade its obligations to create safe learning environments for all who pass through our school doors.  

Hold Hospitals Accountable  

Exactly one month ago, the mayor was obligated to launch the office of health care accountability to review city expenditures on employee-related health care costs, make recommendations on how to lower these costs, create a publicly accessible website that would provide information on the costs of hospital procedures and summarize the cost transparency of each hospital. Implementing the office has the potential to save the city up to $2 billion annually, but nothing yet has been done. It is crucial that this critical office, the creation of which we wholeheartedly supported, takes shape post-haste and that we eliminate price discrimination and deceptive estimates for medical services.   

SCA Capital Plan  

Finding space to implement the class size law requires investment in the capital budget, but the School Construction Authority’s capital plan, as well as the DOE’s submissions to the state, show little action. $2 billion was cut from the capital plan for new school capacity and the number of new seats diminished by nearly 50%. The capital plan’s revised format — which does not provide proposed locations or grade level for 78% of projects — makes tracking SCA progress in building new seats nearly impossible. The plan’s lack of transparency violates both Education Law § 2590-o and the class size law itself: The DOE must submit an “annual capital plan for school construction and leasing to show how many classrooms will be added in each year and in which schools and districts to achieve the class size targets."  

The mayor’s decision to reduce the school system’s capital budget while expanding charter school co-locations and, in the IBO’s estimation, overestimating charter school enrollment growth to the tune of $91 million through the end of the financial plan, will also have a chilling effect on the city’s ability to meet the law’s benchmarks.     

Before approving any co-location, the Council should require the DOE to analyze class sizes, assess the co-location’s impact on school safety, staffing, transportation, specialized rooms and utilization of shared spaces, including extracurricular activities, outdoor space and summer programs; outline proposed or potential use of the school building for other educational programs or administrative services as required by law; and conduct prescribed activities to ensure all affected parties have a voice in the proposals.  

In addition to dedicating the necessary city funds to this critical class size endeavor, the Council should explore implementing impact fees for new development that would offset the costs for capital construction and upgrades to school facilities.  

On Feb. 6, Speaker Adams, on behalf of the Council, joined the mayor in calling on the State Legislature to raise the Transitional Finance Authority (TFA) debt capacity. Well, the Senate made its conditions clear last week — any increase is contingent on the city expanding the school construction capital plan and demonstrating the plan's achievement of class size reduction mandates. The ball is in the Council’s court to ensure that these terms are met and the city’s capital needs financed.  

Over 300 — one in four — NYC public school buildings were affected by the storm on Sept. 29 as our crumbling public-school infrastructure confronted the brunt of climate change. It is time to invest in the infrastructure of our NYC schools. Most of our school buildings need basic repairs and upgrades to address everything from antiquated heating and air-conditioning systems to deteriorating rooftops to outdated electrical grids. The capital budget must take advantage of opportunities in the $2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and allocate funds to retrofit our schools for climate resiliency, combat flooding and ensure the totality of schools —from the kitchens where our colleagues in DC37 work to instructional spaces, gymnasiums and auditoriums — are properly ventilated and air-conditioned. 

By investing in school infrastructure, we can create tens of thousands of good union jobs while making schools healthier and safer, taking on climate change, and saving $250 million per year in energy costs that can be reinvested in our schools. An estimated $400 million will electrify and weatherize 500 schools by 2030, while $1.25 billion over five years will ensure that half of our schools are accessible for all users by the end of the capital plan.   

Fund UFT Programs  

We are proud to say that UFT programs are among the best vehicles city government can use to ensure that the allocated funding for education makes it straight to the classroom and has a direct effect on students and educators. This year we submitted discretionary funding applications for six programs we ask the City Council to support.  

• UFT Teacher Center: The UFT Teacher Center accelerates learning and empowers students through award-winning embedded professional development tailored to each school’s unique needs. It has been a guiding light for New York City educators for more than 40 years. During the 2023–24 school year, the UFT Teacher Center opened 30 new Teacher Center sites, for a total of 170 sites across the city, and provided high-quality support in three urgently needed areas: 1) ensuring that educators are prepared to support students in literacy development using the science of reading and the new curricula being used in the NYC Reads/Reading for All initiative; 2) ensuring that educators are prepared to provide the social and emotional supports their students need to address the trauma they have experienced in these unprecedented times, including students who are new arrivals to our city; and 3) ensuring that all students receive support equitably through providing professional learning that is culturally responsive and sustaining and that prepares educators to reach all students, including students with disabilities and multilingual learners. This year we are asking for a $5 million grant from the Speaker’s Initiative to Address Citywide Needs and $3.6 million from the Support For Educators Initiative to sustain current programming and move toward establishing a Teacher Center in every city public school building. Those funds would also allow the program to expand its partnership with Google and increase its work with Apple, support paraprofessionals in addressing the needs of students with disabilities and English language learners and increase culturally responsive-sustaining education course offerings.   
• United Community Schools (UCS): Our teacher-inspired nonprofit has developed a community-school model proven to transform public schools and the communities they serve. A three-year evaluation of UCS from the 2019–20 school year to the 2021–22 school year highlighted that UCS enrolls more students with disabilities, English language learners, and economically disadvantaged students than the city’s non-community public schools and that the programming had a statistically significant positive impact in three areas: attendance, greater high school credit accumulation and higher language acquisition test scores. The model is anchored by a community school director placed in each school who is responsible for assessing the needs of students and families in the school community, then leveraging outside relationships to bring in the resources to meet those needs. We find that every $1 invested in a community school director yields $6 in resources for the school. Last school year, UCS collectively supported 20,000 students and their families, helped feed and house 19,000 families, and provided 18,000 mental health, 10,000 health and 6,000 dental visits. This year we are requesting that the Council provide UCS with a $5 million grant so we can sustain our current network of 32 community schools by intensifying academic programming, making more tutors available, expanding access to school-based health centers, connecting more students to mental health and behavioral health resources, and providing more social-emotional learning and culturally responsive-sustaining education professional development for teachers.  
• Member Assistance Program (MAP) and Positive Learning Collaborative (PLC): In 2009, the UFT started MAP to fill a void. The union crafted and funded the program to address a full range of mental health and well-being issues confronting its more than 190,000 members and their families. Addressing the growing mental health and wellness crisis, MAP provides free counseling, workshops, support groups and more — services that enable many educators to remain in the field of public education. We’ve seen a 65% increase in demand for our support since the start of the pandemic and anticipate continued need this year. Many of our members told us that the support provided by MAP helped them cope with and adapt to the stress caused by the pandemic. During this time, MAP provided support groups, a Let’s Talk About It series, a telephone careline and mental health referrals that allowed members to stay connected, express their grief and recognize their fears and stressors. It offered them healthier coping tools to navigate the COVID-19 upheaval and recover. The PLC program is one of our most effective tools for bringing equity to New York City public schools and helping teachers, students and parents cope with — and heal from — trauma. The UFT and the DOE created the PLC program in 2012 to help educators improve school culture by moving away from punitive disciplinary systems that relied heavily on suspensions. For nearly a decade, this expert team of clinicians and public school educators has been using social-emotional strategies, evidence-based training and healing practices to decrease disciplinary incidences and improve academic performance and school climate. Over the past several years, schools we work with have seen almost a 50% reduction in suspensions and an increase of more than 65% in positive relationships between students and educators. We have delivered more than 16,000 sensory toolkits to help students readjust to the classroom. We are asking the Council to consider allocating a $1.5 million grant to help us maintain and expand these valuable programs.  
• Progressive Redesign Opportunity Schools for Excellence (PROSE): The UFT launched PROSE in 2014 in collaboration with the New York City school district and the principals’ union to allow schools with a high level of educator voice to utilize contractual and regulatory flexibilities to better serve the needs of their school communities. Many of the over 200 PROSE schools that currently exist have a strong emphasis on project-based learning. The program includes most of the consortium high schools in the city, which have a state waiver allowing them to replace state Regents exams with project-based assessments, as well as other schools that focus on this kind of curriculum/assessment. PROSE also includes most of the Internationals Network of high schools, which are focused on serving students who are new arrivals to our city. We are asking the Council for $150,000 to support schools in continuing these efforts, to expand the program to more school communities around the city, and to facilitate the sharing of best practices between schools around these innovations in the 2024–25 school year. 
• BRAVE hotline: The UFT and the Mental Health Association of New York City (MHA), now known as VIBRANT, on Oct. 3, 2011, launched an anti-bullying campaign in New York City public schools. Since then, the UFT and MHA have been at the forefront of bringing awareness to the problem of bullying and creating resources that include a BRAVE (Building Respect, Acceptance and Voice through Education) hotline that students, their families and educators can call, as well as ways to chat or text for help, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With your continued support, we can make a lasting impact on the lives and health of students across New York City. We ask you to support this anti-bullying program with $220,000 in this fiscal year so we can continue to provide the services that are a lifeline for our students and a place our educators can turn for resources.  
• Dial-A-Teacher: Dial-A-Teacher began in January 1980 as a pilot program in 17 schools in eight districts. Over the years, our homework helpline has expanded to help students citywide in all grades, across various disciplines and in many languages. Dial-A-Teacher is now operating Mondays through Thursdays from 4 to 7 p.m., offering help in nine languages, including Spanish, Mandarin and Bengali. Last year, the program received more than 40,000 calls. If Dial-A-Teacher’s operating technology were upgraded, it could help even more students in the virtual-education arena, where so many of our students are now learning. We are requesting $186,000 to support this program. The funds would be used to maintain an online presence to meet the technology that students are using today, procure digital curriculum for multiple subject areas — curriculum that the Department of Education has identified that aligns with the new standards — and promote the program in the communities we serve with an emphasis on newcomers and asylum seekers in our public school system.     

Part of the UFT’s work is providing these programs through the Education Foundation and community school services through the union’s nationally recognized United Community Schools.  Like many CBOs providing services to New York City, the union is dealing with excessive delays, late payments and micromanaging by OMB, which is charged with processing and paying CBOs’ contracts. To date, New York City owes the UFT some $17 million. While the union is large enough to weather such mismanagement on the part of the city, many other service organizations are financially unable to remain open.  

Closing Thoughts   

We have an opportunity to bring transformational change to New York City public schools. With access to adequate funding, we can permanently reduce class sizes for all our students, which will not only improve educational outcomes but also make schools healthier learning environments. With access to federal infrastructure funds and new state funding, we can dramatically increase both our academic and social emotional support for students and accelerate progress to make our schools carbon-free and healthy. 

The city’s preliminary budget squanders the resources we have all fought so hard to bring to our students. The preliminary budget defunds our schools and allows the city to renege on its responsibility to provide a constitutionally sound basic education for all students. Our students deserve better.  

I want to thank you again for today’s hearing. We look forward to our continued engagement throughout this budget process.