Mamdani breaks promise, pays bribes to do the right thing on class-size law
Insane: Mayor Zohran Mamdani has to bribe the city teachers union so that it will OK the Legislature delaying the impact of the noxious class-size law to help him balance his budget.
This deal not only exposes how closely state lawmakers guard the interests of the United Federation of Teachers, its details reveal how perverse that law truly is.
It’s a three-way bargain: Albany gives New York City a few more years to ensure that every city classroom has 20 or fewer students per teacher, and the city pays a bonus ($8,500 the first year, $9,500 the second) to (some) teachers who wind up with “too many” pupils.
Funny: The class-size mandate is supposedly about helping the kids — why aren’t they the ones getting paid for the delay?
Of course, it was always really about feeding the UFT, whose membership rolls would otherwise decline along with fast-dropping enrollment in the regular public schools; that’s why UFT chief Michael Mulgrew demanded compensation for agreeing to let his bought-and-paid-for lawmakers ease off.
As for the idea, pushed by pet UFT pols like state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) and pet UFT “activist” Leonie Haimson, that smaller class sizes are the Holy Grail needed for an academic miracle in public schools: Look which teachers will get the bonus for their classes not being reduced.
It’s overwhelming ones in the better schools — because the rotten ones already have low teacher-to-student ratios, which have worked no miracles at all.
Note, too, that enforcing the class-size limits will harm students, because schools like Stuyvesant HS and Bronx Science are already busting at the seams: They’ll have to reduce enrollment because they have no more rooms to fit more, smaller classes.
Want another irony? Mamdani vowed on the campaign trail to zealously implement the class-size law, even faulting Mayor Eric Adams for dragging his feet.
Now the socialist boy mayor is not only delaying it himself, he’s paying (legal) bribes for the right to do so, tacitly admitting he was wrong (and Adams was right!).
We’re glad Mamdani’s breaking yet another promise, though it’s too bad he has to pay off mafia boss Mulgrew for permission to do it.
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