MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia’s teachers striking for the fourth day over low pay and rising health insurance costs say state legislators are failing to learn their civics lessons, which may have to be driven home at the ballot box in November.

All 100 seats in the House and half of the 34 Senate seats will be on the fall ballot. Both chambers are controlled by majority Republicans, who have advanced a pro-business agenda against higher taxes and for limiting government spending and regulation, similar to the Trump administration and Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.

Teachers are paying close attention to the specific actions of each legislator, regardless of party, and will vote accordingly, several of them say. They say it’s an unlearned lesson that has had consequences for the state’s children, already facing more than 700 classrooms staffed by uncertified substitutes.

“If the Legislature continues to not listen to our pleas and our cries for help, as I teach my students on a daily basis, your vote does matter,” said Phil Caskey, who teaches social studies at University High School in Morgantown. “And I think there’s enough fire in the state right now, a lot of people will do their best to vote out incumbents and create some change back in this state.”

Caskey was among more than 150 people, many of them teachers, who attended one of Gov. Jim Justice’s three town hall meetings Monday at high schools in northern West Virginia. The crowd cheered colleagues’ comments for better state commitments to public education. One teacher estimated that all public workers, similarly squeezed, and their families constitute about one-third of West Virginians and will turn out to vote.

In Charleston, Justice and union leaders were meeting Tuesday to try to bring about a resolution to the strike. During a break in the negotiations, American Federation of Teachers’ West Virginia chapter President Christine Campbell and West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee said the talks were productive and would continue.