MILWAUKEE – On Friday, April 24, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA) filed a Prohibited Practices complaint against Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC).

Since opening bargaining in February, MPS has falsely claimed to MTEA’s bargaining team, MPS employees and the media that their three less-than-inflation cost of living proposals would save MPS between “$10 and 20 million.” These false figures have been published repeatedly in the media, including in reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as recently as April 21.

In truth, the difference between the cost of providing MTEA bargaining units the maximum 2.63% COLA on July 1 and MPS’s highest-cost proposal is only $2.2 million according to MPS Administration’s own calculations.

MTEA filed a prohibited practices complaint yesterday on the grounds that MPS has failed to bargain in good faith and has interfered with MTEA members’ exercise of their rights under the Municipal Employment Relations Act (MERA) by:

  • Improperly inflating the costs it attributes to MTEA’s proposal and misleading MPS employees about the nature of the parties’ disagreement on those costs;
  • Dramatically overstating the savings associated with MPS’s proposals; 
  • Unlawfully inflating the costs associated with base wage proposals by linking those costs with step/lane advancement and non-wage benefits; and
  • Implying to all MPS employees that the District may “need to” cut more positions, withhold step advancement, and/or cut healthcare benefits if MTEA does not concede


MTEA’s proposed remedies to WERC include:

  • Ordering MPS to communicate to all employees that the cost difference between MTEA’s proposal and MPS’s best proposal is $2.2 million and that its claims that its proposals would save $10-20 million were incorrect;
  • Ordering MPS to cease and desist from threatening reprisal toward MTEA’s bargaining unit members if they do not agree to MPS’s bargaining proposals; and
  • Ordering MPS to engage in good faith bargaining with MTEA


MTEA President Ingrid Walker-Henry issued the following statement:

“MPS students, workers, families and our community deserve to know our public schools will have stability and predictability going into the 2026-27 school year. MPS Administration is making that incredibly difficult by going out of their way to mislead our community about the real financial impact of providing a 2.63% cost of living adjustment to frontline MTEA workers on July 1st. It is our hope that through this Prohibited Practices complaint to and in mediation with WERC, MPS will be compelled to bargain in good faith with MTEA and to be honest with our community.”

View the complaint HERE.