CSA Files Lawsuit Over Salary Gap For Directors in Day-Care Centers

The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators Dec. 2 filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court over the decades-long wage gap faced by Directors in community-based organization day-care centers, who were predominantly women of color earning just over half as much as their counterparts working for the city Department of Education.

The union, which represents 171 Directors working at day-care centers, claimed in the suit that its members performed duties that were “virtually identical” to those of District Directors at early-childhood education centers operated by the DOE. Despite that, CBO Directors earned an average salary of $77,000 during their first year on the job, $56,000 less than their DOE counterparts. 

Gap Widened With Tenure

After 10 years on the job, the gap widened to $76,000, and after two decades the average salaries of DOE District Directors were nearly $83,000 higher. Those working for DOE programs also earned a pension, which CBO employees did not. And many CBO staff worked year-round, even when schools closed during the summer months, the suit stated.

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The union argued that the disparity “smacks of racial injustice and patent unfairness” because 92 percent of CBO Directors were women of color. By contrast, 31 percent of District Directors were black and Latino, according to the claim.

The pay disparity has contributed to staffing and retention problems at community-based day-care centers, which provide seats for 62 percent of the children enrolled in Pre-K and 3K programs. The city is seeking to expand 3K, with an additional 16,500 seats announced this past spring.

“Mayor de Blasio has touted Universal 3K and Pre-K as essential to his legacy, and the DOE has always asserted that the same standards apply in all early-childhood programs throughout our city,” CSA President Mark Cannizzaro 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. This is not only hypocritical, but we believe unlawful.”

'Why Were We Left Out?'

For years, Teachers working in early-childhood education centers sought parity with their DOE counterparts. In 2019, District Council 1707–which later joined District Council 37–and the Day Care Council of New York reached a contract agreement with the city that included a $17,000 raise for educators with a bachelor’s degree and a $20,000 salary increase for those with a Master’s, providing a path to parity.

“To date, there has been no reasonable explanation as to why CBO Directors–a group predominantly composed of women of color–is not entitled to the same pathway to parity,” the lawsuit stated.

The Day Care Council of New York represents 200 publicly-funded day-care centers across the city. Gregory Bender, the Day Care Council’s director of public policy, said the organization “continues to seek fair and equitable compensation for community-based early-childhood education Directors.”

The collective bargaining agreement that covers the CBO Directors expired in September 2020. In May, the union and the Day Care Council submitted a salary proposal to the city that would have boosted their salaries, but the city rejected it. 

“Despite repeated notice, the Mayor, DOE, and the city have all turned a purposeful blind eye” to the growing wage gap, the claim stated. 

'Bargaining Didn't Work'

During an interview with WBAI, Mr. Cannizzaro noted that “it just got to the point now where we decided that trying to bargain wasn’t working so we had to go by filing a lawsuit.”

The union is hoping that a judge will rule that the city discriminated against the Directors and order it to provide back pay.

In 2013, Communications Workers of America Local 1180 filed a lawsuit charging that the city had discriminated against the women and people of color who made up a majority of Administrative Managers. The union argued that the title—which has a $53,000 starting salary—was paid the equivalent of $93,000 a year in the 1970s, adjusted for inflation, when it was mostly held by white men.

In 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found reasonable cause to believe that the city had discriminated against Administration Managers for decades. Four years later, the city and union reached a $15-million settlement.

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