Paraprofessionals delivered firsthand testimony before city lawmakers in support of the RESPECT check, pressing City Council members to pass legislation that would provide a $10,000 payout each year and address what they described as a growing financial crisis among the title.

“Imagine getting a check and you still can’t meet your bills. Imagine having your lights turned off. Imagine being homeless,” Paraprofessionals Chapter Assistant Secretary Anthony Barnes (photo, right, gray vest) told members of the City Council’s Committee on Civil Service and Labor. “And these are paraprofessionals that we talk to on a daily basis.”

The bill under consideration would provide “workforce stabilization payments” to help close the widening pay gap between the city’s 26,000 UFT-represented paraprofessionals — who earn roughly $32,000 to $54,000 a year — and higher-paid titles. The measure has garnered broad support, with 46 of the City Council’s 51 members signed on as co-sponsors.

Union leaders told lawmakers that current wages, even with recent contractual increases, are not enough to sustain workers.

“Our paraprofessionals cannot survive,” Paraprofessionals Chapter Chairperson Priscilla Castro said. “Our students need our paraprofessionals. The paraprofessionals are the backbone of our classrooms.”

Paraprofessionals are the people who get children off the buses, make sure they are fed and their diapers are changed, and individualize teachers’ lessons to help students learn, testified John Kamps, a representative for the Paraprofessionals Chapter. Low, unlivable wages are a major reason why schools are short 3,000 to 4,000 paraprofessionals, and that means other paraprofessionals have to pick up the slack, he said. Many have second or third jobs outside of school, he added.

The legislation builds on a similar proposal introduced in the Council last year.

The measure has generated significant backing. The UFT submitted testimony from more than 50 paraprofessionals who were unable to attend the daytime hearing, and more than 108,000 New Yorkers have signed a petition calling for the bill’s passage.

A representative from the Mayor’s Office of Labor Relations said the legislation is not permitted because it would be outside the collective bargaining process, in which different unions typically receive the same percentage raises from the city. The Office of Labor Relations and the city Office of Management and Budget have a history of telling unions that some of their members must give up some of their own raises if they want to direct additional funding to other groups of members.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew rejected that argument. He said it is the city’s responsibility, and he urged lawmakers to act:

“There is nothing that says the City of New York must adhere to this pattern of saying other workers need to pay for the raises.”