No to Mayoral Control – For Teacher-Parent-Student-Worker Control of the Schools!
Mamdani Betrays Class Size
Mandate, UFT Tops OK Delay
By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT
In 2020 the CSEW and the Internationalist Group called for measures to reopen the schools safely, including for thousands of teachers and staff to be hired for smaller class sizes.
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In 2020 the CSEW and the Internationalist Group called for measures to reopen the schools safely, including for thousands of teachers and staff to be hired for smaller class sizes. |
On June 1, as part of the backroom deals in Albany to finalize the New York State budget, legislators in agreement with NY governor Kathy Hochul gave New York City mayor Zohran Mandani an additional $500 million to close a budget gap by delaying, by two years, the deadline to lower class sizes in NYC public schools. The 2022 law capped maximum class sizes at 20 students for kindergarten to third grade, 23 for grades 4-8 and 25 for high schools, to be implemented in 20% increments over four years, with full compliance by 2028. Now that has been extended to 2030. When he was a state senator, Mamdani voted for the law, and on the campaign trail last year he declared that reducing class size was “critical,” slamming Mayor Eric Adams for slow-walking compliance and turning it into a “negotiation.” Now the supposed “democratic socialist” mayor has done just that, betraying his campaign promise – and the hundreds of thousands of students who will face four more years of overcrowded classes.
What’s more, the leadership of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is going along with this gross betrayal. When the law was passed by the state legislature in 2022, UFT president Michael Mulgrew greeted it at as “a milestone in the years-long struggle to bring the benefits of smaller classes to the city.” When NY governor Kathy Hochul signed it into law that September, he hailed it as “groundbreaking.” But now Mulgrew signs off on the budget deal, arguing that exemptions were only for a school’s lack of physical space (with a plan to overcome this); if a school had been given money for more teachers but was unable to hire enough; or overenrolled schools. And he got a side deal of up to $8,500 differential pay for teachers with stuffed classes in schools with exemptions. Typical Unity Caucus: in exchange for giving up a hard-won union gain, they ask for more money. That’s what happened when they sacrificed seniority transfers in 2005, resulting in several thousand teachers being put into limbo in the Absent Teacher Reserve.
So why is Mamdani backing off from reducing class sizes now? Answer: because his capitalist masters ordered it. The mayor, a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), campaigned on a platform calling for free childcare from age 2 (2K) and free buses, to be paid for by a 2% tax surcharge on salaries over $1 million. But the DSA Democrat is a member of the capitalist party that runs both the state and city. Governor Hochul nixed Mamdani’s minimal “tax the rich” scheme and bus plan, agreeing only to the 2K program (that extends existing 4K and 3K programs). The Citizens Budget Commission, the voice of Wall Street on municipal finance, has been saying since last December that the mayor-elect would have to cut back on the class size mandates to fill the gaping budget deficit hole. And so, on May 12, Democratic mayor Mamdani and Democratic governor Hochul issued a joint press release calling for the Democrat majority legislature to delay the class size law mandates, which it is now doing.
It was not the first time Mamdani abandoned a campaign promise on education. On the day before his inauguration, he reversed his call for an end to mayoral control of the public schools, a position he strongly defended throughout the election campaign, arguing (correctly) that it shut out teachers, parents and students from crucial decisions. Again, the powers-that-be explained to the chief executive officer of the city that is “the capital of international finance capital” that he needed to be in control to push through “hard decisions,” like hobbling the class size law. In short, it is the “responsibility” of the pseudo-socialist Democrat to do the dirty work for capital. And if today there is hardly a peep of protest from teachers, not only from the bureaucracy’s Unity Caucus, but also from opposition groups like the Movement of Rank-and-file Educators (M.O.R.E.), New Action Caucus, it is in good part because the UFT endorsed Mamdani and most doubtless voted for him. Not us. We oppose voting for any capitalist party or politician.
Reducing Class Size: The Single Most Effective Way to Improve Education
Lowering class sizes is widely – and among working educators, almost universally – recognized as a main way to improve education, and doubly so for students from poor, black and Latino neighborhoods who make up the large majority of those in NYC public schools. As Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters put it, “The research is crystal clear that smaller classes lead to better student outcomes in every single way that can be measured” (US News & World Report, 29 August 2022). Class Struggle Education Workers has been calling to lower class sizes since our inception. In a December 2009 leaflet, “Beat Back the Attack on Union Gains and Public Education,” our No. 1 demand was “Reduce Class Sizes, Now!” We added, “Despite the court ruling on the Campaign for Fiscal Equality’s suit, class sizes are rising throughout the system. Reducing class size is the single most effective way to improve education, helping teachers teach, and students to receive more individual attention. Set up a union monitoring system to ensure court guidelines and present contractual class sizes are enforced.”
Various pundits and education “experts” have called lowering class size into question. Liberal publications like Chalkbeat and the New York Times peddle propaganda about studies suggesting greater benefits from experienced educators; that the benefits of smaller classes being offset by less effective new teachers; that the most overcrowded classes are in elite schools, so lowering class size will disproportionately benefit white, middle-class students; that declining enrollment in education courses means not enough teachers could be hired; that smaller classes would require impossible, budget-busting school construction, etc., etc. What is the conclusion? Never hire new teachers, don’t build new schools? The same outfits pushing this garbage also call for semi-privatized charter schools as more “cost-effective,” want to drive out many educators with punitive teacher “evaluations,” want to weaken teachers unions by introducing “merit pay” and the like. They are enemies of public education.
The objections to limiting class sizes are cynical sucker bait. The fight is not about pedagogy – large classes of 30+ students make it almost impossible to give individual attention to every one. The fight is about $$$ – and smaller classes in New York schools will cost hundreds of millions to hire more teachers and several billion to finance new buildings. So? The current budget of the NYC Department of Education (D.O.E.) is running at $45 billion a year. How many additional teachers are needed? Estimates vary. In 2024, New York City Comptroller Brad Landers estimated 14,000. Also that year, the D.O.E. put the figure at 10,000-12,000. Mamdani’s 2006 budget called for hiring 6,000 more teachers, but after the deal with Hochul, he slashed that to 1,000. This is nothing, especially as the city typically hires 4,000-5,000 new teachers annually for normal turnover. Any way you cut it, Mamdani just sold educators and students out.
Lowering class sizes is a basic measure that parents and teachers are everywhere in favor of, since it greatly enables both teaching and learning. And just like any improvement to public education, black and Latino kids stand to gain the most. The battle over class sizes has been going on for decades. In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) lawsuit in the early 1990s, the NY State Supreme Court ruled that reasonable class sizes are essential to a “sound basic education.” In 2001 courts ruled that NYC schools were unconstitutionally underfunded, and the state was ordered to send billions to improve city schools. A 2003 CFE ruling declared New York City class sizes excessive, and the state legislature mandated the city “develop and implement a class size reduction plan for all grade levels.” Yet after that, class sizes rose. The 2022 law with specific dates and numbers was a major victory, which must be defended. And it will take a major effort to bring the country’s largest public school system into compliance.
The UFT Must Use Its Power to Enforce Lower Class Sizes
The UFT can force the city to lower class sizes by putting its foot down and insisting that the caps be met. In fact, the 2022 law stipulates any exceptions be agreed to by the D.O.E.’s collective bargaining units, the UFT and CSA (Council of School Supervisors and Administrators). The union long ago insisted on limiting the number of students per class: the current levels (32 to 34) were written into the UFT contract in the early 1960s. But in recent decades the Unity bureaucracy has opposed calls to lower class sizes in contractual bargaining, arguing that the money for that would come out of the same pot as raises. And after the Adams administration did nothing at all in the first two years to implement the law, already last year Mulgrew & Co. signed off on thousands of exemptions to enable the fiction that the city had met the 60% compliance requirement. Now, just to meet the 70% level (down from 80%) under the amended law next school year will require thousands more exemptions.
As Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters noted, the “DOE appears to be counting on receiving permanent exemptions from the state, as well as from their union partners, the UFT and CSA, so that these schools will never have to lower class size.” No doubt the school bosses are hoping that declining student enrollment (now down to 800,000, down from over 1 million in 2018-19) due to falling birth rates and immigrants disappearing under Trump’s mass deportation drive, will do the job. At a June 3 UFT “town hall,” Mulgrew claimed that issuing exemptions and allowing the two-year extension was necessary to “protect” the law. Two days earlier, he argued, “If giving this new administration two more years gets us a partner committed to building the necessary seats,” then it’s a good deal. But DSA Democrat Mamdani, contrary to his phony “socialist” credentials, is no “partner” of working people; as head of the capitalist government he defends the interests of the bosses – like right now over the class size law.
And by the way, about that “differential pay” deal: pay attention to the fine print. According to what UFT president Mulgrew said at the town hall and in an email to the members, that will be available only to teachers of overcrowded classes in schools that have received exemptions. But most overenrolled school have not. In school year 2025-26, 10,500 out of a total of 150,000 classes in the city’s 1,800 schools got exemptions, but the teachers of the 43,500 other classes that were not in compliance with the class size limits would not have been eligible for the additional pay. So if you’ve got a supersized class, chances are you won’t see the fabled extra dollars on your pay stub. Mulgrew also claimed that demanding this would be an “incentive” for the city to comply with the law, since it would have to pay extra not to. But the amount of this chump change is so piddling it won’t incentivize anything.
A couple of final points about class sizes. First, Mamdani himself went to the Bank Street School for Children, one of the top private schools in the city, from grades two to eight, where class sizes average 16 students per class. (He then matriculated at the elite Bronx High School of Science, one of the top city “specialized” schools.) But then, as we pointed out in a box on “Their Class Sizes and Ours” in a December 2010 CSEW leaflet, “We Can Stop the School Closings!” city rulers and schools chiefs are not like us: their kids have smaller class sizes. At the time, we noted, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s children attended Spence, a private school with average class sizes of 14. His chancellor, Joel Klein, sent his stepdaughter to Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut, average class size 11. The following chancellor, socialite Cathleen Black, who admitted she had never stepped foot in a public school, sent her children to a different private boarding school in Connecticut, Kent, average class size 12. Just sayin’.
Also, much lower class sizes are very possible for regular public schools. Even with the caps of 23 to 25 students per class, classes in New York City schools would be much bigger than in the rest of the state, which for high school average 17-19 students per class (and since NYC is included in those averages, accounting for over one-third of the total, this means that elsewhere classes of around 15 students are the norm).
To fight the Mamdani’s administration’s two-faced austerity program – proclaiming he will “fight to lower class sizes” while sabotaging the plan to get there – educators need a fighting program. Class Struggle Education Workers calls to replace mayoral control with teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools. While it will ultimately take a revolution to fully achive this, it can be made concrete in crisis situations. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, by August 2020 the CSEW put forward a “Class Struggle Program to Reopen New York City Schools Safely.” This included demands: “Make Schools Safe: Class size, 10-15 tops, HEPA air filters, rebuild bathrooms, hire thousands of teachers, staff, custodial.” We called for “union-led safety committees at every school” and to “Use union power to keep schools open safely.” But instead, many teachers unions (and oppositions) were insisting on keeping schools closed – with disastrous results, politically and educationally for the students.
As loyal “labor lieutenants of capital,” the UFT tops (also Democrats) take responsibility for the city budget, while Mamdani puts education to the chopping block as did Adams, de Blasio and Bloomberg. It is important for class-conscious trade unionists to understand that the bureaucracy that sits atop the unions is not just a bunch of sellouts but a privileged, petty-bourgeois layer (Randi Weingarten as head of the UFT’s parent body, the American Federation of Teachers, rakes in a cool half million dollars a year between salary and allowances), which seeks to mediate between the bosses and the workers by clamping down on militant labor struggle. And while they can sometimes be forced to defend the interests of the workers organizations they (mis)lead, their fundamental loyalty is to the capitalist system. Hence their support to the bosses’ Democratic Party. The CSEW calls instead to build a class-struggle workers party. At the July 2025 UFT Delegate Assembly that endorsed Zohran Mamdani for mayor, Yari Milo Michel, a supporter of the CSEW, said:
“I don’t think we should endorse any capitalist politician – whether it be the Democrats, Republicans, or independents for that matter…. Both parties represent the interests of capital and both are the enemies of public education. Both are also the parties of the genocidal war in Gaza, the war in Iran, the attacks on immigrants, and of police brutality. We should be clear, we are being asked today to endorse the next boss of the NYPD, the murderers of Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo as if racist police murder is a question of picking the right Democrat and not systemic.
“Now, Mamdani is the talk of the town. While we need to fully reject the false racist and Islamaphobic accusations of antisemitism against Mamdani for expressing opinions in defense of Palestinians, this does not mean we should throw political support behind his campaign. He is a Democratic Party capitalist politician through and through.
“In my opinion, the unions across this city, including us, need to take independent action in defense of all those under attack, including the retirees. And we need to struggle for a real workers party and government to accomplish this.”
[1] “Project STAR, a large-scale experiment carried out in Tennessee in the 1980’s, showed that those students who were randomly placed in smaller classes in K-3 did better in every single way that could be measured.” https://classsizematters.org/testimony-on-the-importance-of-lowering-class-size-in-nyc-schools/
[2] Education Law Center, “Reducing Class Size in New York City: Promise vs. Reality” (June 2016).
[3] See “Our detailed critique of DOE draft class size plan for 2025-2026 school year” (9 July 2025)
[4] See “NY lawmakers to give Mamdani 2-year extension to comply with NYC class size mandate,” Chalkbeat, 1 June.
Class Struggle Education Workers is an organization, fraternally linked to the Internationalist Group, of union and non-unionized activists in all aspects of education fighting for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed. See the CSEW program here. The struggle for students’ and educators’ rights, and mobilization against the genocidal war on the Palestinians continues. If you are interested in joining these efforts, contact the CSEW at cs_edworkers@hotmail.com. .■