NYC Mayor Sues City Council Over Law Giving $10,000 Bonuses to Paraprofessionals – The 74

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani sued the New York City Council on Wednesday, hours after a bill giving classroom paraprofessionals $10,000 in bonus pay became law. 

The lawsuit claims that the council’s approval of bonuses for some of the city’s lowest-paid school employees is unlawful because it bypasses the traditional collective bargaining process. 

The bill, passed unanimously July 16, automatically became law Wednesday after Mamdani failed to sign or veto it. If he had vetoed the legislation, it would have gone back to the council and members could have overturned his veto with a two-thirds vote.

Similar legislation introduced last year was backed by the United Federation of Teachers in an effort to address the city’s paraprofessional shortage. After the bill failed to move out of committee, it was reintroduced in February by multiple council members. 

New paraprofessionals earn roughly $33,000 in the city. The pay scale tops out near $57,000 for paraprofessionals with a bachelor’s degree and 15 years of service. Over the past 20 years, starting salaries have increased nearly $12,000 for paraprofessionals, while the highest-paid principals have seen raises totaling $86,000. The bonus pay law will give full-time paraprofessionals four payments of $2,500 throughout the 2026-27 school year. 

The union said in a statement that the legislation was carefully drafted to ensure it didn’t violate the city’s collective bargaining law. Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president, said Wednesday that the city’s claim it was suing to protect employees was “a joke.”

“The city council would not have introduced — let alone passed — this bill if it were illegal, and we would not have supported a bill that threatened our collective bargaining rights,” the union said on its website. “Once again, the city has proven that it cares more about protecting pattern bargaining than protecting the most vulnerable children in our city and the paraprofessionals who keep them safe.”

The new law allows the council to reauthorize stipends each year as long as New York City Public Schools has a paraprofessional shortage or until the city changes the practice of pattern bargaining — a local policy that lets the salary increases negotiated for one municipal union’s contract set the pattern for all the others.

The union and council members said pattern bargaining has contributed to low paraprofessional pay. Once an initial bargaining pattern is created, it’s challenging to get the city to grant better terms to another union, according to the United Federation of Teachers.

Mamdani’s lawsuit argues that by sidestepping the collective bargaining process, the city council set a “perilous and unlawful precedent with huge fiscal consequences for the Department of Education and the city — and, by extension, the tax-paying public.”

“If the paraprofessional pay bill is allowed to stand, other public employees will undoubtedly seek their own ‘stabilization’ payments from the council, also outside of the collective bargaining process, or otherwise use council proposals for such payments as leverage over that process,” the lawsuit said.

Marie Wausnock is a New York City paraprofessional who co-founded Fix Para Pay, a union caucus that opposes Mulgrew. She said several paraprofessionals oppose the bonuses as a way to bump wages because the money does not count toward pensions and is currently approved only for the 2026-27 school year.

“You know what’s going to happen? I’m sure they will have people who will want to become a para. Because they’ll get an extra $10,000,” she told The 74. “They’re going to work for a year. They won’t really see what the job is about, and if they won’t have another $10,000 [the following year], they’re leaving.”

City Council Speaker Julie Menin said in a Wednesday press release that council members unanimously approved the paraprofessional bonuses and that it’s unacceptable for some employees to receive only a $32,000 salary to support some of the district’s highest-need students.

“This law is not only the right thing to do, it is also the fiscally responsible thing to do, helping address the staffing shortages that contribute to the city’s $1.5 billion in Carter case costs,” she said.

New York City spends more than $1 billion annually on what are called Carter cases — legal claims that allow parents to enroll children with disabilities in private school and seek tuition reimbursement from the district on grounds that it failed to provide an appropriate education, as required by law. 

Multiple city council members said during the July 16 vote that the stipends are necessary as a first step toward solving the district’s paraprofessional shortage. New York City Public Schools was short more than 1,500 support staff last year. 

“This is not the answer,” Wausnock said. “The answer is fixing our longevity [pay increases]. It’s fixing our base pay.”

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