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Cute kids, free cookies, Mayor Bob Walkup.

Backers of Proposition 403 rolled out the big names at an elementary school Monday afternoon in a press conference designed to marshal support for a TUSD budget override that will appear on the ballot in November.

Students toting purple and green signs squeezed alongside some prominent Tucsonans, including Walkup, former UA President Peter Likins and Tucson businessman Joe Snell, president of Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc.

They crowded the front entrance of Borton Primary Magnet School, 700 E. 22nd St., to deliver one message: Vote Yes on Proposition 403.

One student's handmade sign showed stacks of dollar bills floating down on parachutes to his school. An appropriate image since, if passed, the override will expand by 10 percent the Tucson Unified School District's current budget limit — roughly $28 million the first year. It would remain at 10 percent for five years, then ramp down for the sixth and seventh years.

The student, Hugo Bauer-Bedrick, 6, said he was there "to play with the other kids."

"And support TUSD," he added.

That override money would go to programs aimed at shrinking class sizes, expanding arts education and pumping up teacher recruitment and retention.

For example, TUSD hopes to use the extra resources to cap class sizes at 18 for kindergartners, said Ann-Eve Pedersen, who organized the event with the Invest in Kids Committee, a group working to pass Proposition 403.

The override would cost the average homeowner an extra $127 per year. But that extra tax burden comes to about 35 cents a day, Pedersen said.

"I don't even know what I would buy for 35 cents a day," she said.

Speaker after speaker gave endorsements to the override.

"There is no great city that I know about that doesn't have, at the body of the city, a great school system," Walkup said.

Likins said that greater investment was needed at all levels of education.

One of the first two questions businesses looking to move to Tucson ask is, "How are the schools?" Snell said.

Better-funded schools are essential for Tucson to stay economically competitive, he said.

Those involved stressed the need to get the community mobilized in support of Proposition 403. The last override failed in 2004.

"We need a lot of grass-roots support to pass this," Pedersen said.