PHOENIX — Hundreds of schools across Arizona continued closure May 1 as educators and their supporters marked their fourth day of a statewide walkout, demanding teacher raises and restoring necessary school funding back to pre-recession rates.

Sparked from nationwide demonstrations, the walkout began late April with nearly 110 districts and charter schools comprised of 852,000 students closed, making it the largest teacher walkout in recent U.S. history. More than 50,000 educators, parents, students and supporters filled the streets of downtown Phoenix later convening at the Capitol to voice their demands.

According to CNN, the Arizona Educators United (AEU), a coalition of Arizonan teachers and educational professionals, asked for a 20 percent pay raise for teachers by next school year and annual raises after that until teacher salaries reach the national average. Leaders of AEU said they would end the walkout if the state legislature approved a budget. However, the budget fell short of what AEU originally demanded.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican leaders in the legislature offered a deal May 1, announcing that they were giving a 20 percent pay increase to teachers without raising taxes. The proposal also includes making the first payment toward restoring nearly $400 million slashed from school building and maintenance budgets following the 2008 recession. This, however, did not satisfy the teacher’s demands for improved education funding, contending that the proposal would not be viable without tax measures.

Teachers of Statewide Walkout Take Matters into Their Own Hands

The teachers continued their protest even when the legislature was released while grassroots groups filed paperwork to introduce a ballot initiative, bypassing lawmakers and going straight to the voters for education funding. The initiative, if included in the November ballot, would plan to increase income tax on wealthier Arizonans to support education funding.

AEU leaders told the media that they didn’t get everything they wanted but promised to keep fighting. “They are only going so far. They will not restore the $1.5 billion the AEU wanted,” said Noah Karvelis, a teacher and AEU organizer, at the news conference. “The war is not over, but we’ve won an important battle to move the legislature this far.”

Schools anticipate to open May 3 as teachers participating in the walkout say they will return to school if the governor passes the budget proposal.

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The bill creates a new model for education funding that is required as part of a budget deal approved by legislators earlier this summer, reported the Associated Press. Governor Rauner removed the part in the bill that he described as giving “an unfair diversion” of money to help CPS teacher pensions and removed funding that the district previously received in the form of a block grant, according to Reuters.

A compromise over the new model for education funding has required decades of back and forth between both Republican and Democratic legislators. Both sides agree that the current, 20-year-old calculation to fund public schools across the state is unfair because it requires them to rely heavily on property taxes. In turn, this creates an unequal balance in per-student funding, but lawmakers continue to disagree on how to fix the problem, according to the Associated Press.

The bill currently under debate includes a formula that gives money to the neediest districts first after making sure that no district receives less money than the previous school year. This includes pension help for CPS since it is the only state district that pays the employer portion of teacher pension costs, reported the Associated Press.

Now that Governor Rauner made changes to the bill, it will return to the legislature where three-fifths of lawmakers in both chambers need to approve or override Rauner’s changes. If neither side can raise the required votes, then the legislation will die.

Without the new bill, schools will not be funded, including the first round of payments due to schools on Aug. 10. As of now, all schools are expected to open on time, but some will be forced to make cuts or even close if an agreement isn’t made this fall.

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