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Mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday embraced the controversial state law shrinking New York City public school classroom sizes — unveiling a $12 million-plan to hire 1,000 new teachers a year.
The Democratic nominee’s proposal would provide prospective teachers with $12,000 a year in tuition assistance in exchange for a commitment to work in the city’s school system for three years.
“Frankly, this is an initiative that speaks to a desire that many have. It’s also an initiative that requires funding,” Mamdani said alongside United Federation of Teachers union leadership in Queens.
The democratic socialist argued that the $12 million needed will be paid for by slashing wasteful contract spending, implying the process has been corrupt under Mayor Eric Adams.
“We’re going to pay for it by actually taking on the close to $10 billion a year that we are currently spending within our education system on contracts and consulting,” Mamdani said, “much of which is not only not standardized, not only duplicative, but also there are a number of those contracts that seem to have more in common with who the vendors know than what the work is that they’re actually doing.”
The Queens state assemblyman acknowledged the class-size law — which he voted for in 2022 — created a dire staffing crunch.
“This is a policy that addresses this shortage,” he said during an event in Queens. “It is a policy that will be a city wide initiative to train, to certify and to hire new teachers to create a pipeline from school to school to ensure that every year we are hiring an additional 1,000 new teachers.”
New York City must slash classroom sizes across the board by 2027-28 under the law, which passed under intense lobbying from the UFT, which has endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy.
At least 7,000 to 9,000 more teachers will be needed in the city’s schools to fulfill the law’s strict requirements, officials have said.
Adams and other critics — many of whom broadly support smaller classes — have blasted the law as a budget-busting unfunded mandate thrust upon the city.
The city would have to spend at least $1.6 billion each year to employ an additional 17,700 teachers, according to an Independent Budget Office analysis released a year after the law passed.
Adams complained for years that the mandate was unaffordable, until he pulled an about-face in April and announced the city would hire 3,700 more teachers.
Supporters of the law argue shrinking class sizes will help students, but also help retain overworked teachers.
“Fifty percent of our teachers leave within the first five years of teaching,” said MaryJo Ginese, the local UFT’s vice president, who spoke alongside Mamdani.
“We’ve passed legislation to reduce those class sizes. But with that being said, we need to be able to attain more teachers.”
Mamdani stayed largely quiet on class sizes throughout the mayoral race before he released his hiring plan Wednesday that proposes two pathways to recruit new teachers.
“The first will be an early college track that will look to work with high school students who will receive not only mentorship, but college credit, and then this $12,000 a year in tuition assistance,” he said.
“The second will be a mid-career track for New Yorkers, adults, who are looking to change careers.”
Mamdani’s plan broadly overlaps with another proposed by his electoral rival Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo, the former governor, also calls to recruit another 1,000 educators a year through a teacher residency program, along with vague promises of “loan forgiveness” and “tuition assistance.”
But Cuomo also argued that carrying out the class-size law is impossible without more money from the state, while Mamdani’s doesn’t mention asking for an Albany assist.
Asked about Mamdani’s proposal a City Hall spokesperson said: “Contrary to misinformation some may be spreading, more than 13,000 new teachers were hired under this administration alone and we are investing $23 million more to recruit and to boost opportunities for our teachers, students and staff.”
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