NYC principals union sues Education Dept. over pay disparities for preschool directors
A “staggering” wage gap between directors of city-funded, community-based preschools — who are almost exclusively women of color — and those in Education Department facilities — who are mostly white — amounts to racial discrimination, a newly filed lawsuit alleges.
The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union representing preschool directors under the umbrella of Mayor de Blasio’s sprawling “Universal Pre-K” program, filed the suit Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court after a years-long effort to close the wage gap through negotiations went nowhere, union officials said.
“The mayor’s unwillingness to address this income inequity undercuts his commitment to ending ‘a tale of two cities’ and communicates that the families that utilize these programs somehow deserve less,” said CSA president Mark Cannizzaro. “This is not only hypocritical, but we believe unlawful.”
Wage gaps have been endemic to the ambitious Universal Pre-K program since it rolled out in 2014.
In order to guarantee a free slot for any city youngster who wants one, the universal pre-k initiative relies on a combination of district-run programs in DOE buildings, and community-based nonprofit programs that receive city funding.
Teachers and directors in the community-based programs have long earned significantly less than their counterparts in DOE programs, despite doing similar work.
City education officials began to address those disparities for teachers in 2019 through a sweeping “pay parity” initiative that promised to close wage gaps of up to $20,000 annually over a period of several years.
But community-based Pre-K directors, whose wage gap with their DOE counterparts is even wider than that of teachers, never got such a deal.
Directors of community-based Pre-K programs make an average salary of roughly $77,000 after two years, compared to an average annual wage of $138,135 for preschool directors at DOE sites with the same amount of experience, according to the lawsuit.
Underlining the wage disparities are stark discrepancies in the racial composition of the two groups.
More than 90% of community-based directors are women of color, according to the CSA, while only 31% of DOE preschool directors are African-American or Latino. The yawning wage gap between the two groups “constitute[s] unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender, in violation of the New York City Human Rights Law,” the suit argues.
Union officials say they’ve been working for years to eliminate the wage gap through contract negotiations but couldn’t secure an adequate agreement.
In the last round of negotiations, the city proposed pegging the salaries of the community-based Pre-K directors to those of the teacher they supervise — rather than matching them to the directors doing comparable work in DOE sites, the lawsuit claims.
That rule, which sets community-based Pre-K director salaries 6% higher than the wages of the teachers they supervise, “imposes an artificial cap tied to the wages of individuals performing work that is not even remotely equivalent to the work that the CBO Directors perform,” the suit claims.
Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city Law Department, said “our early childhood directors are critical partners and we are grateful for their work to serve New York City’s children, families and communities. The city has made historic investments in this sector and supports the Day Care Council’s efforts to negotiate a fair contract with each of their unions. We will review the suit.”
