UFT state legislative priorities
State priorities one-pager
View the UFT's state legislative priorities for 2026.
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Fix Tier 6
Keeping talented educators in the classroom and recruiting new educators into the profession is more important than ever.
What we're asking
- Build on previous work to allow Tier 6 members to be able to retire at age 55, after 30 years of service, without reductions.
School funding - Foundation Aid
With the federal administration cutting funding to our highest-need students, the UFT stands ready to work with the New York State Legislature to protect our students and school communities.
Protecting our students includes updating and fully funding the Foundation Aid formula to reflect the actual needs and costs of providing our children an education in New York City. Last year’s budget agreement resulted in New York City receiving $314M less aid than expected. Over the past two years, the state and city have been working to address the affordability crisis faced by every day New Yorkers. We’ve provided record tax relief for parents and school meals for all students. The Foundation Aid formula also needs to be improved to reflect the high needs and resources necessary to provide our students a sound basic education.
What we're asking
- Reform the Foundation Aid formula by:
- Updating the Regional Cost Index to reflect the high costs of education in NYC (S8125/A9049).
- Increasing the weight for the highest-need English language learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities (SWDs) without reducing funding for more advanced ELLs and SWDs.
- Adding a weight for students in foster care or experiencing homelessness (S8139/A9048).
Child care
New York City’s families deserve affordable, safe care for their children, and the 8,000 home-based child care providers we represent deserve good working conditions and fair and reliable compensation.
The UFT commends Governor Hochul for her recent investment in universal child care for all children under five. We are eager to partner with her, Mayor Mamdani and the New York State Legislature to fulfill the promise of truly universal 3K and to ensure the successful rollout of 2-Care for families across New York City. We also ask that the state uphold its commitment to paying providers for enrollment instead of attendance.
What we're asking
- Increase salaries for providers by recognizing their role as our children's first educators.
- Phase in the replacement of the market rate methodology with a model that captures the true cost of providing quality care.
- Increase the special needs rate by moving to a higher base rate and removing the 15% market rate cap.
- Ensure automatic rate adjustments for all care types and ensure annual automatic renewal for special needs rates.
- Increase and automatically apply differential payment rates for families experiencing homelessness. Increase rates for nontraditional hours of care (S4079/A1734 of 2024).
- Continue funding the Facilitated Enrollment Child Care Project.
- Allow home-based providers to own and operate multiple child care businesses.
New revenue
We stand with NYSUT in saying this year’s budget must find new sources of sustainable revenue from the ultra-wealthy to address New York’s growing affordability crisis while maintaining the quality of its public services and expanding the broad consensus developing around universal child care.
What we're asking
- Increase New York’s top tax rates for those earning over $5 million by 1%.
- Increase the corporate tax rate by 1.9% for corporations with over $5 million in profits.
- Capture New York’s fair share of federal taxes avoided by multinational corporations that shift profits to foreign tax havens.
Overwhelmingly supported by the public, these reforms would generate approximately $5 billion in revenue for the state to invest in education, workforce development, child care, transportation and housing.
Charter schools
Charter schools continue to take up space that public schools need to serve their students and to comply with the class size law. Charters also lack financial transparency, fail our most vulnerable students and openly exploit loopholes to their advantage.
Additionally, the federal administration’s new school voucher program is undermining public education by using public funds for private schools.
What we're asking
- End the state requirement that the district offer space in public school buildings to charters when that space is needed to lower class sizes.
- Prevent the federal voucher program from coming to New York state.
- Stop using public funds to pay for private facility space rented by charters (S423/NSA).
- Eliminate charters targeting newly constructed buildings to avoid the co-location community hearing process (S1423/NSA).
- Limit charter school grade level expansions (S527/A6891).
- Make the Board of Regents the sole authorizer in the state (S77/A6112).
- Pass the Charter School Transparency and Accountability Act (A6884/NSA).
Invest in the education and health care workforce
New York City and State are facing ongoing staffing shortages in health care and education.
New York estimates it will need 180,000 teachers over the next decade; 97% of hospitals reported a nursing shortage last year; and New York City has been short thousands of paraprofessionals, educators who work with the most vulnerable students, the past few school years.1. We need to create a comprehensive strategy to address these shortages, similar to those used to hire over 3,500 teachers this school year as part of the effort to reduce class sizes.
Investing in Career and Technical Education is one way to address the crisis
What we’re asking
- Fully fund last year’s increase to special services aid, including the addition of 9th grade.
- Create clear career advancement pathways for LPNs to obtain their master’s degree, to build a pathway to high school nursing programs.
- Incentivize colleges and industries to provide hands-on CTE experiences for high schoolers.
- Support a recruitment and retention campaign in partnership with the state to promote teaching and nursing as desirable careers.
Create access to a career ladder for current workers
What we’re asking
- Increase the starting salaries of our lowest salaried workers.
- Provide and/or promote financial incentives for qualified candidates to become paraprofessionals, teachers, and orderlies.
- Create tuition-free master’s degree programs at CUNY and SUNY in education and nursing.
- Support Gov. Hochul’s proposal building upon the New York opportunity promise scholarship to also cover the tuition for those who enroll in associate degree programs in nursing even when that individual has previously obtained a post-secondary degree (covering individuals pursuing a new career path to nursing).
- Support the expansion of teacher apprenticeship programs to provide more opportunities for paraprofessionals and substitutes to become full-time teachers, especially in shortage areas such as special education.
Nurses
The Federation of Nurses/UFT represents 16,000 nurses across New York State. We have been at the forefront of the fight to enforce safe staffing laws that we and other unions fought to enact.
What we're asking
- Enforce the safe staffing laws at hospitals across the state.
- Ensure hospitals are providing the appropriate level of security for the physical safety of personnel, including nurses, both inside the building and off-site caring for patients.
- Support nurses negotiating with private hospitals.
- Support transparency surrounding the attrition and vacancy rates of nurses.
- Support adequate training for the newest nurses and place them in lower-intensity units for their first year of work.
- Support preventative mental health care for nurses.
- Ensure there is a nurse in every school building (S6779/A8377).
- End mandatory overtime for homecare workers (S7994/A8615).
UFT Teacher Center
The UFT Teacher Center accelerates learning and empowers educators through embedded professional development tailored to each school’s unique needs. The number of school-based sites has increased to 189 sites today from up 115 sites in the 2020–21 school year.
✓ 203 Teacher Center site coaches embedded in schools across NYC in 2025-26
✓ 341,864 participants – educators, principals, and parents – attended Teacher Center seminars in 2024-25
✓ 126,547 hours of transformative professional development in 2024-25
What we're asking
- Provide level funding for Teacher Centers statewide at $21.4M.
- Build on the progress made with Science of Reading and fund one-on-one demonstration math coaching by teachers for teachers in the classroom.
United Community Schools
United Community Schools (UCS) is a teacher-inspired nonprofit improving outcomes for over 18,000 families at the 39 community schools it operates across NYC and Albany.
✓ Higher test scores
✓ Better attendance
✓ More credits earned
✓ Increased sense of safety
✓ 6:1 return on investment
✓ 51,000+ health and wellness visits coordinated
What we're asking
- $4M grant to sustain our network of community schools.
- $100M in categorical aid to expand the number of community schools in the state.
- $5M allocation to UCS to provide statewide technical assistance and support.
Housing
New York’s leaders cannot afford to go another year without taking action on our state’s housing crisis. Students and their families and educators all face steep rent increases, evictions, and no affordable home ownership opportunities.
What we're asking
- Strengthen tenant protections.
- Fund the Housing Access Voucher Program.
- Create new workforce housing in the public sector—a Mitchell-Lama program for the 21st century.