On the campaign trail last year, Zohran Mamdani backed a city council bill to pay school paraprofessionals (non-teacher school aides) a $10,000 supplement for the 2026\u2013 2027 school year. The bill\u2019s purpose was to fill a shortage in those roles. Now, the mayor finds himself suing to stop a law he supported as a candidate.<\/p>\n
In July, the city council unanimously approved<\/a> the RESPECT Check Act; in August, it became law without the mayor\u2019s signature. Mamdani\u2019s administration is now arguing (correctly, as my colleague Ken Girardin has explained<\/a>) that allowing the city council to set employee compensation would amount to an end-run around the city\u2019s collective-bargaining process\u2014and, therefore, a handout to the powerful teachers\u2019 union.<\/p>\n Finally, a reason to check your email.<\/p>\n Sign up for our free newsletter today.<\/p>\n \u201cThis 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\u2019s $1.5 billion in Carter case costs,\u201d Council Speaker Julie Menin said<\/a> last month in response to Mamdani\u2019s lawsuit. But a one-time $10,000 check for paraprofessionals won\u2019t solve the city\u2019s budget-busting Carter case costs. These costs shouldn\u2019t be invoked to justify a union handout.<\/p>\n Under federal law, students with disabilities are entitled to the services laid out in their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). For some students, that means support from a public school paraprofessional. If the New York City Department of Education can\u2019t provide that support, parents can file a due-process complaint. Not all due-process complaints are so-called<\/a> Carter cases, which arise when parents who believe the public schools cannot appropriately serve their children place them in a private school and then ask the city to reimburse the tuition. The resultant settlements generally compel the city government to pay that tuition\u2014with the average annual Carter settlement per student now exceeding $100,000 per.<\/p>\n The city spends<\/a> about $1.5 billion annually on Carter cases today, up from a mere $47 million in 2005<\/a>. But these ballooning costs are not driven by a lack of paraprofessionals, as Menin claimed. The major source of bloat is an unwillingness to reevaluate prior placements, along with complaints over services that paraprofessionals cannot provide\u2014not understaffed classrooms.<\/p>\n The costs of paraprofessionals are only a fraction of what Carter cases cover. A large share of costs come from the city reimbursing private school tuition for students who can\u2019t be served in traditional public schools. Last school year, the city made such payments on behalf of nearly 7,600<\/a> students.<\/p>\n Even among non-tuition cases, paraprofessionals are not the dominant driver of costs. In 2023, the comptroller\u2019s office analyzed thousands of special-education complaints. The most common issues were special-education instruction, speech and occupational therapy, make-up sessions for services that children had missed, or required services by certified teachers or other licensed providers. In fact, paraprofessional services are not among the 19 issue categories the Department of Education tracks in these complaints.<\/p>\n Carter case costs have risen as the city has become less willing to dispute parents\u2019 claims. As I\u2019ve explained<\/a> previously, the city changed how it handled these cases under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Under de Blasio\u2019s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, the Department of Education hired additional lawyers to contest private school placements and reevaluate them annually. The de Blasio administration made these cases easier to settle, and payments faster to process. In 2015, the first full year under the new policy, the Department of Education settled 60 percent more tuition-reimbursement cases without a hearing.<\/p>\n In addition, federal \u201cpendency\u201d rules<\/a> require the city to continue paying for an existing placement while a dispute is being resolved. That allows some students to remain in publicly funded private placements for years. Those existing placements make up a substantial part of the city\u2019s spending.<\/p>\n Attributing the growth in Carter spending to staffing failures doesn\u2019t add up for another reason: the city is measurably getting better at providing services. Between 2014 and 2016, only about 60 percent of students with disabilities received all the services required by their IEPs. By 2023\u201324, that figure had improved to about 92 percent. Yet Carter case spending keeps growing. If staffing failures were driving those costs, then, as the Department of Education delivered more mandated services, fewer families would have grounds to leave the school system, and spending would decline. Instead, Carter spending tripled while the share of students with unmet services shrunk by nearly 80 percent.<\/p>\n Even if the council were right about the source of the problem, making $10,000 bonus payments to the city\u2019s roughly 26,000 existing paraprofessionals will not fill the 1,600 paraprofessional vacancies<\/a>. These are the result<\/a> of a broken hiring system, which determines<\/a> who can become a paraprofessional, where he or she can be hired, and how quickly vacant positions can actually be filled. Paying off the beneficiaries of this cartel won\u2019t do anything to dismantle it.<\/p>\n The RESPECT Check Act will neither help fill paraprofessional shortages nor address the city\u2019s underinvestment in public special-education needs. And it does nothing to change the policies that helped push Carter case spending to $1.5 billion. Instead, it mostly lines the coffers of the city\u2019s unions.<\/p>\n