UFT vows to light a fire under DOE
Despite the city’s best efforts to derail the class size law through years of failing to adequately hire staff or plan school construction, the UFT is determined to hold the city accountable and ensure 100% compliance, especially in light of state lawmakers extending the timeline.
City schools reached the required threshold of 60% compliance for the 2025-26 school year. But the city Department of Education admitted it was unprepared to meet the 80% compliance rate for 2026–27 or 100% by September 2028. In early June, state lawmakers adopted legislation to extend the timeline. The change makes the required compliance rate 70% for 2026–27, 80% for 2027–28, 90% for 2028–29 and 100% by 2029–30. That means two more years before every city classroom must be in compliance with the class size limits — 20 students in kindergarten through 3rd grade, 23 in grades 4–8 and 25 in high school classes.
The delays are unfair for teachers and the students they serve, UFT President Michael Mulgrew explained to about 500 members who joined an online town hall on the amended class size law on June 3. UFT members have fought too long and hard for smaller class sizes for this and future generations, and the union is going to make sure the DOE and the School Construction Authority get it done right, he said.
“Teachers should not be paying the price for the DOE’s failure,” he said. “It was the DOE that chose not to put in construction plans for the schools that actually need space. It was the DOE that chose not to come up with new strategies for recruitment and articulation.”
UFT members have been fighting throughout the union’s 66-year history to put class size limitations in place, Mulgrew noted. In the 1970s, teachers gave up a pay raise in exchange for including class size limits in the DOE-UFT contract.
To ensure accountability with the new timeline, the UFT has negotiated a deal with the DOE to compensate eligible teachers whose classes remain above new class size limits in schools that have been granted temporary hard-to-staff or lack-of-space exemptions. They will receive pay differentials of up to $8,500 in the 2026–27 school year and up to $9,500 the following year. Teachers in schools with higher economic need will be addressed first.
Not every teacher whose class is out of compliance with the limits will receive the differential, Mulgrew explained. For schools to receive space exemptions, plans must be in place to add more space, with design and construction work already underway. But having an exemption doesn’t mean that a school doesn’t have to lower as many class sizes as possible while it’s waiting for additional space, he said.
In addition, the differentials are not just payments to teachers; they are a tool and a strategy the UFT is using to ensure the law is fully implemented and schools can stay in compliance, Mulgrew said. “That’s what it means to be in a union,” he said. “The union works together to get things done.”