OKLAHOMA CITY — After months of enthusiastic promises from state lawmakers that raises were on the horizon, Oklahoma teachers woke Wednesday morning to bleak news.

Lawmakers grappling with an $878 million shortfall advanced a budget in the wee hours of Wednesday morning that doesn’t provide any sort of pay boost for the state’s more than 40,000 classroom teachers.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Shawn Hime, executive director of Oklahoma State School Boards Association. “It was an open goal of both Republicans and Democrats, leadership on both sides and very widely expected by the Oklahoma public.”

In the final week session, many educators were still holding out hope that lawmakers would make good on their promises to pass a long-term pay plan that would boost their compensation, which education groups say is well below the regional average.

Urgency had only intensified since voters last November rejected a plan, not endorsed by Gov. Mary Fallin, to hike the state sales tax to fund $5,000 raises for teachers.

State Sen. Ron Sharp, R-Shawnee, said Wednesday some of his colleagues had promised the Legislature could do better than that plan if voters rejected it.

“It’s just impossible for us to do it here,” he said. “We can’t get the revenue. You’ve got to have a funding source.”

He proposed his own $5,000 raise, which failed because lawmakers couldn’t agree on a funding source.

Frustrated education proponents couldn’t help but notice that the raises were not part of the $6.8 billion budget bill that was widely expected to win House and Senate approval in the next two days before being sent to Gov. Mary Fallin.

Under the budget, nearly all state agencies are facing as much as 4.87 percent reduction in spending, including the state’s CareerTech programs, according to a budget synopsis released by the state Senate.

The state’s colleges and universities, meanwhile, will see their budgets cut by 4.5 percent.

“There’s a tremendous amount of support for giving teachers a pay raise — and there’s a great desire to do that — but without having the recurring revenue to put into the baseline of the budget, it’s just impossible at this point,” Fallin said Wednesday as she stood outside the state House chamber.

The Republican governor has long been a champion of increasing teacher pay.

“I understand the problems that we have in education,” she said. “Education is the most important thing we need to do for the future of our state to make sure that we have … children that are highly educated and that we also have a good, strong workforce.”

She said if teacher raises were in the state budget this year, lawmakers would have to make bigger cuts to corrections, Medicaid, health care, public safety and other all other agencies.

“How much of a cut more do you want to give some of these agencies to give teachers a pay raise?” Fallin asked.

Lawmakers estimated that each $1,000 increase would cost taxpayers about $52.6 million a year. The most popular plan called for phasing in $6,000 raises over three years.

Education groups, meanwhile, report that low pay is pushing experienced teachers out of the profession or into taking higher-paying jobs in other states.

With nearly $80,000 in student loan debt, new teachers can’t afford to accept the state’s $31,600 starting salary and still be able to afford an apartment, a car and clothing, Sharp said.

“Who wouldn’t be disheartened?” said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. Teachers haven’t received a state raise for about a decade now. “Our legislators are not listening to the people.”

Priest admitted she was frustrated that lawmakers “waited until the eleventh hour to throw something together and pass it that doesn’t have enough money to support” many core services, including K-12 education.

“So how could they put in a teacher raise?” she asked. “They didn’t do their jobs, so shame on them.

“Our kids are riding on buses that are breaking down and riding on roads that are full of potholes because there’s not enough money to fund roads and bridges and pay for the maintenance on buses or even the drivers who drive (them),” Priest said.

State Rep. Brian Renegar, D-McAlester, said lawmakers had to balance teacher needs versus cuts to other agencies.

He said even without the raises, the proposed budget doesn’t adequately fund public schools, which are grappling with increasing student enrollment and costs.

“Let me put it this way: I’m going to vote ‘no’” on the budget, he said.

K-12 schools are slated to receive $2.4 billion next year, a 0.15 percent increase from the year prior.

But that doesn’t mean more money will flow into the classroom.

Lawmakers decided to reallocate $20 million that typically flows directly into the classroom through the state’s student funding formula in order to pay for teacher health care, Hime said.

Hime’s group is urging lawmakers to reject the budget and send lawmakers back to the drawing board in a special session to craft a budget that will help retain in-state teachers, reduce class sizes and increase student funding.

“This session started with a lot of promise,” Hime said. “Partisan politics reared its ugly head and really killed all those opportunities to date.”

Janelle Stecklein covers the Oklahoma Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jstecklein@cnhi.com.