PROVIDENCE — The Providence School Board voted 5 to 3 Tuesday to approve a new three-year contract that requires teachers to pay a larger share of their health-care coverage and includes pay raises totaling 3 percent over the life of the agreement.

Teachers overwhelmingly approved the contract last week. The contract calls for raises of 1.5 percent in each of the first two years and no raise in the third year.

Board members Melissa Malone, Maila Touray and Ronnie Young voted against the contract and Robert Wise, Philip Gould, Brian Lalli, Katherine McKenzie and Grace Gonzalez voted for it. The discussion, which took place in closed session, lasted almost 90 minutes.

Young said he couldn’t support the contract, which calls for raises totaling 3 percent and is retroactive to Sept. 1, 2007, because it does not represent a complete break from the previous contract. Malone said that teachers deserve a raise but said she can’t justify salary hikes during these difficult financial times.

Even some of those board members who approved the contract did so grudgingly.

“I’m conflicted,” McKenzie said. “I believe that teachers should be paid for the work they do. But then I see children in buildings with lead paint, children without the most up-to-date textbooks. It grieves me. It’s a hard choice.”

Wise, the School Board president, said he hopes that the next contract will establish a more effective way to evaluate teachers and include a new way of hiring teachers that isn’t based on seniority, something that the state has already ordered the district to do, beginning on a limited basis this fall.

Providence Teachers’ Union President Steve Smith said he was stunned by some of the board’s comments, adding that no one raises an eyebrow when school administrators are hired for five-and six-digit salaries.

“I’ve been insulted in a lot less time than this,” Smith said after Tuesday night’s vote. “They’re saying, ‘We love our teachers but we don’t want to pay them.’ ”

The majority of the 2,100-member union — those who are at step 10 or above on the wage scale — will also receive a one-time retroactive payment equal to 1.5 percent of their salary. That payment will be made no later than September. About 75 percent of the teachers qualify for this payment.

In addition, most teachers will pay a greater share of their health-care premiums, moving from 10 percent to 15 percent. A small percentage of teachers, those hired after Sept. 1, 2004, already pay more than 15 percent of their health care and they won’t pay more under the new agreement.

Under the new contract, most teachers will pay $867 for individual health-care coverage and $2,316 for family coverage.

Last week, teachers expressed relief that, after two years of sporadic negotiations, they finally had a contract they could live with.

lborg@projo.com