NYC teachers union cites autistic teen’s death in fight vs. Mamdani’s para pay lawsuit

New York City’s teachers union on Friday urged a judge to dismiss Mayor Mamdani’s legal challenge to $10,000 payments for public school paraprofessionals, citing the tragic death of a 16-year-old autistic student as evidence of a dire need to fix the staffing shortage, according to new court filings.

The City Council unanimously passed legislation earlier this year requiring the one-time bonus for low-paid school aides, who are represented by the United Federation of Teachers and support students with disabilities. As the bill lapsed into law, the mayor sued the Council, claiming the payments violated state law that mandates collective bargaining.

In a 27-page memo in support of a motion to dismiss Mamdani’s complaint, the UFT pointed to the case of Adonis Jarvis, a student at P.S. 811X The Academy for Career and Living Skills in the Bronx, whose mother and grandmother were charged with murder in July after the boy died of malnutrition and neglect.

The mom pulled Jarvis and his twin brother out of school in January, claiming P.S. 811X did not have a paraprofessional who could help transport her children by yellow bus to and from school, which provides free breakfasts and lunches, the Daily News previously reported.

“A tragic event … adds both real world perspective and emphasis to the Council’s findings,” wrote UFT General Counsel Beth Norton, along with attorneys at the law firm Patterson Belknap.

“Without enough paraprofessionals, one Bronx public school was unable to assign a paraprofessional to assist disabled students, which led a single parent to withdraw her autistic child from school. No longer regularly observed at school, critical independent observation, report and intervention was lacking, the child’s health worsened (unseen and unaided) and fatal malnutrition tragically developed.”

A mayoral spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment. However, Mamdani has previously expressed interest in permanently raising paraprofessional pay through the collective bargaining process.

The UFT cited new data that there was a 160% increase in the reliance on substitute paraprofessionals over the last decade, based on a rise in the number of days subs worked between the 2014-25 and 2024-25 school years. The union said the increase can be attributed to the low pay and exodus of paraprofessionals from the school system.

The filing also hit Mamdani for not only backing the payment as a mayoral candidate, but also supporting a costlier version: “The Mayor repeatedly publicly championed a prior and more expensive version of the measure, namely a $10,000 recurring annual increase,” the UFT’s lawyers wrote, calling the final version, comparatively speaking, “an exercise in fiscal moderation.”

The payments are expected to cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars, with the risk that expenses could balloon if other municipal workers similarly seek pay raises through legislation. A paraprofessional’s starting pay is roughly $33,000 each year.

“Because of the low pay, the city’s public schools have more than 8,000 paraprofessional vacancies this school year,” Mulgrew said. “This means that thousands of our most vulnerable students are going without the services that they are legally entitled to. The City Council took legislative action to address this emergency and stabilize the workforce.”

“This law has one mission: attracting and keeping enough paraprofessionals in our schools to serve our kids. That mission is what the mayor is suing to stop,” he added. “We are asking the court to dismiss the mayor’s lawsuit.”