Educational assistant Alicia Farrington works with cognitively disabled students at Grantosa Elementary School in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee teachers union is urging the district to lift the pay of Farrington and other aides, who they say have come increasingly critical in the classroom. Credit: Mike De Sisti

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Peer into a special education classroom for high-needs students at Grantosa Drive Elementary School in Milwaukee, and you'll see at least three adults.

Which one is the lead teacher is not immediately clear.

The woman coaching students on how to identify the sequence of steps to plant a flower, another working with students at a different table or the woman at the computer helping a girl take an assessment?

She's at the computer. The other two are educational assistants, whose often unsung work is at the heart of a new campaign by the Milwaukee teachers union to raise their salaries.

There's no dispute that educational assistants provide critical help to teachers and children every day. But the prospect of raising their salaries — which the union calls "poverty wages" — is another matter.

The union is seeking a 1.46% raise tied to inflation for educational assistants, which union officials say would cost Milwaukee Public Schools about $472,000. The Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association is mobilizing members to attend a School Board committee meeting Tuesday in support of the request.

"It's not that much money," said Lauren Baker, executive director for the MTEA. "Sometimes a little thing that shows how valuable your employees are goes a long way."

Milwaukee School Board member Jeff Spence said he applauds the work of assistants but that the board is "between a rock and a hard place" when it comes to raising pay.

"Most people would like to give base-building wages to everyone," he said in an interview. "But when you look at revenue projections, not just this year but four or five years out, how can you, as a fiduciary agent, make a promise now that you can't keep?"

Wages for assistants

About 1,600 educational assistants work in MPS, according to the union. Most of the positions, which include paraprofessionals, safety aides, general assistants, child care workers and interpreters, are part-time during the school term.

Paraprofessionals and safety aides make from about $15 to a little over $17 an hour. General assistants and child care workers make from about $11 to $13 an hour, according to figures provided by the union.

MPS educational assistants get full health benefits and a pension, though they pay more out-of-pocket toward those benefits now as a result of the state's Act 10 legislation.

Collectively, the assistants cost MPS about $32 million, according to the most recent payroll figures gathered by the MTEA. By comparison, the approximate 5,000 teachers in the district cost MPS about $310 million.

Part of the union's strategy is longer term. If it can successfully achieve a base wage increase for educational assistants, it's likely to have more luck doing the same for its larger membership unit: teachers.

An across-the-board 1.46% raise for all staff represented by the teachers union — teachers, educational assistants and aides, bookkeepers and accountants, and substitute teachers — would total about $5.2 million.

Throw in the same raise for administrators, plus federal payroll taxes and pension costs, and the total price tag would be about $7 million, according to the MTEA.

Baker said the district already saved that amount of money recently, when it approved moving Medicare-eligible retirees onto the Medicare Advantage plan starting in January 2015.

The district did not award raises for union-represented employees in the last year, she said.

But earlier in 2014, MPS adjusted the salary schedule for teachers and some other employees, which resulted in most teachers receiving a slight boost in pay. Baker said the adjustment brought most teachers an additional $400 annually.

Then, educational assistants and other employees — but not teachers — got a one-time bonus payment equivalent to 1.46% of their salary on their Nov. 7 paycheck, Baker said. The payment did not elevate their base pay.

Baker said the union still believes it's important to push for a 1.46% base-building wage increase because educational assistants have not had a raise in three years.

Union officials say they're waiting for the administration to get authorization from the School Board to bargain for a wage increase for educational assistants.

The administration is scheduled to meet with the finance committee in closed session Tuesday to discuss bargaining strategy over wages.

The union also asked board members if they would spend part of a day shadowing educational assistants on the job. Most board members took the union up on the offer, including Spence and Mark Sain.

Sain went to Grantosa Elementary to shadow special education paraprofessional Alicia Farrington recently.

"Sometimes they're the forgotten people in our schools," Sain said. He added that he thought the board would look at the union's request regarding wages.

"We value all of our employees and want to make sure everyone has a family sustaining wage," he said.

Personal story

At Grantosa, 4850 N. 82nd St., almost one in three students has a disability.

On a separate day from when Sain visited, Farrington patiently worked with some of the school's highest-needs students in a separate classroom.

"You're almost finished," she assured one boy who kept looking up from his work sheet and shaking his hands in what appeared to be frustration.

"Calm down. Sort it out."

The lead teacher in the classroom, Lori Zeller, typically maps out the course of each day's activities, but she relies on assistants such as Farrington to provide students with more individual help.

Sometimes that simply means walking the halls with students to calm them down.

"I really like to work with special-needs children because I like to see them progressing," Farrington said. "I can help them finally get that reading or math concept right. Or I can just be that understanding person who listens. I do a lot of that."

Farrington also gets pulled into other classrooms to help out. She starts her day with bus duty and often helps out in the cafeteria.

Farrington earns about $17.60 per hour at Grantosa, and sells Avon beauty products on the side for some extra cash. She's doing night school to finish her associate degree in early childhood education.

Her husband works but they still struggle to make ends meet. They both have student debt and are raising two kids. They rent a townhome on the northwest side.

"We'd love to be able to buy a home, but I'm scared I'm not making enough," Farrington said. "The way we are right now, we have just enough to make it. We can't save any money. It's living paycheck to paycheck."