A bill to provide $10,000 bonuses to New York City’s full-time paraprofessionals is headed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s desk after it was approved by City Council members Thursday.
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.
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If Mamdani signs the bill, full-time paraprofessionals will receive four payments of $2,500 throughout the 2026-27 school year. The bill 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 United Federation of Teachers and council members said pattern bargaining has contributed to low paraprofessional pay.
“Once the initial bargaining pattern is established, it becomes an enormous challenge to get the city to grant significantly better terms to another union,” the United Federation of Teachers said on its website.
New paraprofessionals earn roughly $32,000 in the city. Over the past 20 years, starting salaries have increased nearly $12,000 for paraprofessionals but top $86,000 for the highest-paid principals.
“We are going to pass this bill and we are going to put it on the desk of the mayor of New York City saying that the paraprofessionals have been unjustly treated and we are in a crisis,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew at a union gathering at New York City Hall on Thursday. “And the paraprofessionals are dealing with that crisis each and every day with their work, going above and beyond, and now it’s time for our city to act and do the right thing.”
Hellbound and Down 