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After robust discussions and three days of voting, members of the Milwaukee teachers union have rejected by nearly a 3-to-2 margin a proposal to contribute about 2.6% of their salary to Milwaukee Public Schools next year to help reduce burgeoning class sizes.

The proposal was one part of an effort the union is launching to enlist a greater amount of community and business support for the state's largest public school system. The union intends to kick off that campaign with a Children's Week starting April 22, but the lack of a financial contribution from teachers will likely make it harder for the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association to persuade citizens and civic leaders to similarly contribute a week's worth of their pay to the school system.

According to results released by the union, 3,931 members voted on the proposal between March 28 and March 30, with 1,635 supporting the measure and 2,296 opposing it.

"We had hoped to jump-start the bigger campaign with this collective contribution," MTEA president Bob Peterson said in an interview Tuesday. He added that teachers are still on board with the campaign to build support for the school system.

MPS estimates the average teacher's base salary to be next year to be $62,800, so a 2.6% pay cut would have amounted to an educator giving an average of $1,633 back to the district next year.

The teachers' current contract with the district calls for an across-the-board 3% raise to take effect on July 1, 2012, so the financial contribution would have essentially amounted to teachers forgoing most of a raise they had coming next year.

The four-year contract called for a pay freeze in 2009-'10, and then a 3% raise on earnings between July 1, 2010, and July 1, 2011. A 2.5% raise then took effect on July 1, 2011.

The contract expires at the end of June 2013, at which point the union will be subject to new state legislation that dramatically limits collective bargaining. That legislation is facing a legal challenge.

Peterson said he has spoken to hundreds of educators about the proposal, and that many said giving up the extra money would have been a burden. Many teachers are paying off student loans, and they and others already contribute much of their own money each year to pay for classroom supplies that are not sent in by families or provided by the district.

Moreover, Peterson said in a letter to members about the outcome of the vote, some teachers "were doubtful that anything we do would convince those in the broader community to seriously support the public schools."

Children's Week plans

The MPS Children's Week will kick off April 22 and run through April 29 with activities and other mechanisms for getting teachers out into the community and the community into schools, Peterson said. That's the same week that the MPS administration is scheduled to release the budget proposal for the 2012-'13 year, he said.

For example, on April 22, teachers will host free ACT tutoring sessions for juniors in MPS at two local churches.

Kathy Xiong, a special-education teacher at Burbank School, said Tuesday that she wasn't initially on board with the idea of giving up a portion of her salary. She said it seemed like a repeat of the internal vote the union held in the summer of 2011, which asked teachers if they wanted to pursue contract concessions to save teacher jobs.

The survey indicated a deep divide in the membership at the time: 52.4% of respondents were opposed to offering additional concessions to bring laid-off teachers back to work, while 47.5% voted in favor of additional concessions, which likely would have resulted in teachers contributing 5.8% of their pay toward their pension.

Xiong herself was laid off two years ago from MPS, and then brought back.

To understand the most recent proposal, Xiong said she attended two informational meetings that helped changed her mind. It felt like the right move to support the financial contribution, despite the fact that some teachers felt the vote was a lose-lose situation, she said.

Xiong said that people need to know about what's going on in MPS classrooms: Many schools don't have specialists anymore, and many libraries have no librarians. Money from individuals and businesses going to charter and voucher schools has hurt the public school system, Xiong said.

Reports from principals, teachers and parents in MPS indicate that cutbacks have resulted in classes swelling to more than 30 students. Some principals have reported classes with more than 40 students to one teacher.