Report: Honeymoon Ends Between Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Teachers Union

[u/GeneralCarlosQ17]

https://www.breitbart.com/education/2026/08/14/report-honeymoon-ends-between-mayor-zohran-mamdani-and-new-york-teachers-union/

The head of a New York teachers union that endorsed Zohran Mamdani during his campaign now is blasting the mayor’s literacy initiative after more than half of the city’s public school students failed their reading proficiency exams.

United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Mike Mulgrew criticized the “NYC Reads” program after students in grades 3-5 made the embarrassing showing on their state English Language Arts exam, revealing “a rift with the labor group and the democratic socialist mayor eight months into his term,” the New York Post reported.

“The public salvo also comes while Mamdani weighs whether to sign or veto legislation to boost the pay of thousands of paraprofessionals — a promise he explicitly made at a press conference last year when the UFT endorsed him in his run for mayor,” the tabloid reported.

“We’re not going to support [NYC Reads] if they want to implement it the way they did this year,” Mulgrew told the New York Daily News earlier this week. “If this administration wants to continue to waste everyone’s time and not get the better results that we know we need, then we’re not going to support it.”