CM Restler on CUNY pedagogical hiring and headcount decline

Councilmember Restler, followed by Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Chair Lee and Chair Joseph, for both of your great leadership.

Chancellor, good to see you and team.

I imagine that Ken is happy to be here wearing a CUNY hat than an OMB hat.

It's a pin, not a hat.

Hat.

Pin, excuse me.

But a friendlier response from this side of the dais.

It's good to see you all.

Thank you.

And I really just first and foremost want to thank you for your work.

Underscoring the points I heard Councilmember Aviles make, you know, CUNY is the place where social mobility happens.

It is the place where we transform people's lives from

you know, struggling in poverty to real economic opportunity and being able to provide and sustain support for a family.

I did want to ask a couple questions about hiring at CUNY.

My recollection was that we were able to restore, I think, $94 million after six or seven rounds of budget cuts by Eric Adams in last year's budget.

Do I have that number right?

That's correct.

Great.

And already the mayor has added and baseline $15 million for CUNY in the executive budget.

Is that right as well?

Yes.

So you guys are doing better.

Still more to go, and we hope to be great champions for CUNY, and I was very pleased by some of the suggested investments in the council's budget response.

I'm concerned that we haven't seen a restoration in hiring that would match that increase in funding.

If I have my numbers right, prior to COVID, there were 4,648 pedagogical employees at CUNY, and we're now down to 4,257, almost a 10% decline.

With the $94 million that we got restored last year, with the additional funding that we've gotten restored this year, are you able to provide any indication to us of the increased headcount that can be anticipated in FY27, on the pedagogical side in particular?

So getting an exact number of that gets complicated because hiring on faculty is done on a campus-by-campus basis, and those needs are very individualized, right?

Can you give me a...

Ballpark, if not an exact headcount of where we're heading.

Because I think we want to make sure that when we're investing in CUNY, that we're also investing in the faculty of CUNY and expanding it.

And with the 10% plus decline that we've seen over the last five, five years, we want to see it reversed.

And we're on the same page.

A couple of notes, right?

Even though we've done gains in enrollment, we're still about 10%, 12% less than we were in the pandemic.

I know.

Right?

So I think that that needs to be put in context.

And the restoration last year in the budget is one year hiring, right, particularly a full-time personnel takes about a year to be able to do that.

On the $50 million, we had to be careful last year because it was not recurrent, right?

So you're careful about not putting people that are going to be on recurrent costs.

So I think that in the next year's budget, you'll begin to see that being corrected in a more precise way because it takes about a year or so to see those things coming to the budget because of the way we hire.

Can I have one more?

But we're committed to the same thing.

Okay.

I'm glad to hear it.

If you're willing or able and follow up to this hearing to provide any estimates or goals of what you're anticipating on the pedagogical hiring front for the year ahead, I think it would further reinforce the council's commitment to support for CUNY.