CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia is poised to return to the center stage of teacher unrest as lawmakers go into overtime to debate pay raises and other measures that spurred strikes this year and last. Union leaders and lawmakers started worrying Thursday that an upcoming special legislative session on education will renew efforts to create the state’s first charter schools as well as education savings accounts for parents to pay for schools.

“We’re very concerned that the special session will be a time they will try to include things that we did oppose,” said Fred Albert, president of the American Federation of Teachers branch in West Virginia.

Late Wednesday, Republican Gov. Jim Justice announced that he was calling a special session since lawmakers couldn’t come to a compromise over a 5 percent teacher raise. He promised the raise and has been lobbying lawmakers for it as a proposal languished in a Senate committee and during budget negotiations.

“I know our legislators, education community, and the people of West Virginia want our education system to be better and believe that our employees deserve a raise, so you have my word that we will get it done,” Justice wrote in a statement announcing the special session. He also said lawmakers will “go out and listen to teachers, parents, community leaders, and all those with a vested interest in making education better in West Virginia.”

It is unclear exactly when the legislature would return, and the governor’s office didn’t respond to messages seeking comment. But Republican leadership is signaling they could reconvene in late spring or early summer, which union leaders say might be a strategy to negate the impact of a third strike.

Senate President Mitch Carmichael, who has pushed hard for charter schools and education savings accounts, bristled at another strike over such measures. “To shut schools down over that is ridiculous,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s the right way to go about threatening a legislature or the parents of West Virginia, with shutting the schools.”

West Virginia teachers took to the picket line last month over a complex education bill that tied their pay raise in with charters and the education savings accounts.