UFT sues to block Mayor Adams’ NYC education budget cuts

The city’s teachers union is suing to stop the Adams administration from shaving as much as $2 billion off the local Education Department budget as part of a long list of spending cuts first announced in September.

The lawsuit, filed by the United Federation of Teachers and four individual teachers and staff in Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday, asks a judge to block cuts this year and restore funding to the same amount appropriated when the budget was adopted last year.

“The cuts are illegal,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew at Foley Square, “and that’s why we’re going to court.”

According to the lawsuit, a provision of the state law that gives Mayor Adams control of city schools prohibits him from cutting school budgets when local revenues are up. The city collected roughly $8 billion more in revenue last fiscal year than projected, court documents say.

Under a separate law, school districts are required to use new state education funding to supplement, but not replace, local spending, lawyers for the union allege. As state funding increased to record levels this school year, the UFT says clawing back city spending will amount to a substitution to keep education programs afloat.

The revised municipal budget, announced in November, would slash $547 million from the city Education Department’s bottom line this school year — a figure that will grow to $602 million in the 2024-2025 school year and even more in the 2025-2026 year, budget documents show.

Adams says the cuts are largely driven by the ballooning migrant crisis, which he says will cost around $12 billion to manage by mid-2025.

The Education Department plans to find savings by reducing the number of public preschool seats and hours of the city’s middle school summer program, and funds for so-called “community schools” that offer social services for the whole family. Some of the cuts are expected to hit children with disabilities hardest, including those with complex needs in District 75 who were relying on a recent federal court order to get the services they need, according to the UFT.

Adams has ordered a second round of cuts and warned a third could be on the way to care for migrants that would bring cuts to the Education Department to $2 billion, if the federal government does not intervene.

The lawsuit alleges the cuts are a “transparent attempt to coax” federal officials “to listen to his pleas” for more aid, even as more funding is available for the city to tap into from the state.

“This is completely political gamesmanship that’s going on,” said Mulgrew.

Mulgrew also said the Adams administration’s “own mismanagement of the asylum seeker problem” is in part to blame for ballooning migrant crisis costs.

City Hall did not immediately return a request for comment on potential state reimbursements and the accusation of mishandling the crisis.

The legal action comes on the heels of a lawsuit by the city’s largest municipal union, District Council 37, filed earlier this month to reverse other Adams budget cuts.

Speaking at a year-end press conference in the City Hall rotunda, Adams said the scathing UFT lawsuit should not be seen as a “reflection” of deteriorating relations between him and the influential teachers union. He offered praise for Mulgrew as well as Henry Garrido, the executive director of DC 37.

“They have to represent their members, and from time to time, friends disagree, and sometimes it ends up in a boardroom and sometimes it ends up in a courtroom,” said the mayor, who was flanked by a number of his agency heads, including Schools Chancellor David Banks. “But that’s not a reflection on if one were to ask me, ‘Does Henry Garrido love the city?’ I would say, ‘Yes.’ Same with Michael, he loves the city.”

The mayor, who has counted Garrido and Mulgrew as key political allies since taking office, said he hopes he can “come to a determination” with both union bosses over the legal beef and both are “smart guys.”

“They know what we’re facing, they know exactly what we’re facing, and they are very smart, they understand government,” he said. “They’ve been there for a long time, and they know the challenges that we are facing at this time.”

After the press conference, Banks declined to comment on the lawsuit when asked about it by the Daily News.