MANHATTAN (CN) — The United Federation of Teachers, New York City’s largest teachers union, is suing the city and Mayor Eric Adams in an effort to thwart potential $2 billion budget cuts to public schools.
Filed Thursday in New York Supreme Court, the union's 35-page lawsuit panned the mayor’s “draconian,” ‘unnecessary” and “illegal” plans to slash resources in New York city schools when they need it most.
“The mayor’s draconian cuts are as unnecessary as they are illegal,” the union claims in the suit. “While the law allows a reduction in education spending proportional to a decrease in city revenue, the opposite is expected to occur. The cuts are being made at a time when the city collected nearly $8 billion more in revenue last fiscal year than was anticipated, and when the city’s reserves of over $8 billion are at a near-record high.”
Last month Adams announced an immediate $547 million cut to New York City’s Department of Education. Combined with further proposed cuts from Adams’ administration, city schools could be stripped of around $2 billion in the coming years, according to the lawsuit.
The mayor blamed the city’s budget crisis on the influx of more than 100,000 migrants who have landed in New York City over the past year. But these recent fiscal cuts are based on an “unverified estimate” from Adams that the migration crisis will cost the city $11 billion over the next two years, the teachers union claims.
“Recent Independent Budget Office and Comptroller estimates conclude that the likely migrant costs are significantly less than the $11 billion the mayor has attempted to solve for,” the union said in Thursday's suit.
Additionally, the union claims that approximately 33,000 migrant students have enrolled in city schools since last year. The union argues that this only exacerbates the education department’s need for resources.
“The brutal irony of the mayor’s action is that he has severely and disproportionately defunded the DOE, one of the primary city agencies that now desperately requires more resources to serve these migrant children, not less,” the group claimed.
Blasting the mayor’s “false narrative” that asylum-seekers in New York City have created a financial crisis, the union claims the education budget is being used as a “bargaining chip” by Adams in order to pump state and federal funds into the city.
“The mayor has repeatedly blamed leaders in Albany and Washington during his negotiations for failing to provide more financial support to New York City,” the union said. “But the law does not permit school funding to be used as a political bargaining chip; and cutting essential services to the city’s schools is not a substitute for the mayoral leadership and advocacy on behalf of New Yorkers needed to obtain federal and state support.”
In a statement Thursday, union President Michael Mulgrew bashed Adams’ administration for “mismanaging” the migration issue and hurting the city’s schools as a result.
"The administration can’t go around touting the tourism recovery and the return of the city’s pre-pandemic jobs, and then create a fiscal crisis and cut education because of its own mismanagement of the asylum-seeker problem,” Mulgrew said. “Our schools and our families deserve better."
The union is seeking a halt to the mayor’s planned budget cuts, which it claims violate the New York State Constitution and state law. It is asking the court to order Adams’ administration to restore education funding to $14.5 billion — the amount that the city appropriated in fiscal year 2023.
Adams addressed the lawsuit during a Thursday news conference, in which he called Mulgrew a “friend” who “loves the city.”
“They have to represent their members,” Adams said of the union. “From time to time, friends disagree. Sometimes it ends up in a boardroom and sometimes it ends up in a courtroom.”
The teachers union isn’t the only major labor union suing Adams over his planned budget cuts, however. Last week, District Council 37, which represents around 150,000 city employees, filed a claim against the mayor for his plan to cut the city’s Job Training Participant Program.
Both unions have been key allies to Adams throughout his mayoral tenure. But Adams doesn’t see their lawsuits as signs of anything other than a “point of disagreement.”
“I hope that all of my union leaders would add their voices to the national government that this should not be happening in New York City,” Adams said Thursday.
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