“It’s tantamount to wage theft,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. She said educators want to be in their classrooms with students but need a guarantee that they will be paid for their work.

“We have been working 24/7 to try to get the assurance that teachers — indeed any American — would want: That if you work you get paid for the work that you do,” she said.

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Teachers gathered for a rally in front of the district headquarters Tuesday, as they had done the day before. “No pay? No work,” read one sign. “Our fight for Detroit kids,” read others.

More than 90 of the city’s roughly 100 public schools were closed Tuesday, according to the district’s Facebook page.

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About 46,000 students attend the city’s schools, and the second day of closures left some parents scrambling to find alternatives for their children. Late Tuesday afternoon, union officials said they were urged members to return to work Wednesday after Steven Rhodes, the school system’s state-appointed emergency manager, assured them in writing that teachers would be paid for their work.

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District officials apologized to families for the “inconveniences” of the teachers’ sickouts, and they urged parents to contact state lawmakers about pending legislation meant to rescue and reform the school system.

“We remain confident that the funding issues for DPS will be resolved,” officials wrote on the school system’s Facebook page.

But lawmakers in Lansing remained deeply divided on how to deal with the long-simmering problems in Detroit’s school system, which has been under state control since 2009.

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Besides ballooning payments on a $515 million operating debt, the district is also facing declining enrollment, friction with less-regulated charter schools and other issues.

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The Michigan Senate in March passed a $715 million fix that was backed by Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan (D). But on Tuesday, the GOP-led House appropriations committee passed a smaller $500 million package that many Democrats feared would resolve neither the issue of missing summer paychecks nor the district’s structural problems. The legislation now heads to the House floor.

The House version, unlike the Senate package, includes a provision that would end current collective bargaining agreements and limit what could be bargained in the future Detroit school system. Rep. Henry Yanez (D-Sterling Heights) said, in describing his opposition, that the measure would “legislatively bust the union.”

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The House version also does not include a provision in the Senate bill for a city education commission that would oversee decisions about the opening and closing of both charter and traditional schools.

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Snyder and Rhodes, the head of Detroit Public Schools, have both said that the teachers’ refusal to work has not been constructive or helpful for finding a long-term funding solution in Lansing. Some other state lawmakers had stronger words.

Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives Kevin Cotter (R-Mt. Pleasant) blasted the teachers, saying that their “illegal sickout strikes” were hurting children.

“These egotistical teachers have lashed out at the children who rely on them and accomplished nothing but disrupting their students’ education,” Cotter said in a statement. “Their selfish and misguided plea for attention only makes it harder for us to enact a rescue plan and makes it harder for Detroit’s youngest residents to get ahead and build a future for themselves.”

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Adam Schilt, an English teacher at West Side Academy, an alternative high school, said he and all teachers would rather be in their classrooms with students than on the streets. But teachers should not be expected to work for free, he said.

“The number one thing I want to teach my students is that it’s important to speak up for what’s important and to make yourself heard, to empower yourself even when other people are trying to pull you down,” he said. “I don’t think I could in good conscience say that to my kids if I didn’t model that for them.”

Under Michigan law, teachers may not strike, but Detroit teachers have staged multiple sickouts in recent months to protest the deplorable conditions of the city’s schools, which are run by a state-appointed emergency manager.

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The sickouts helped draw national attention and city inspections that found many code violations for problems including mold, rodents, missing ceiling tiles and broken glass. The union has also sued state officials over the conditions, arguing they violate students’ constitutional rights.

This week’s job action came during National Teacher Appreciation Week, after union leaders learned that the financially crippled school system would run out of emergency state funding at the end of June.

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Union leaders said that about two-thirds of Detroit teachers receive their annual salary in 26 installments and risk not being paid for any work they do after April 28. They said that they are effectively being locked out of their jobs because the school system is not living up to the collective bargaining agreement, which includes terms of compensation.

Union leaders said they had taken out an advertisement in the Detroit Free Press. It calls on Snyder to guarantee that they will be paid for their work. “Detroit educators and students have sacrificed greatly. When is enough enough?” the ad says. “Asking teachers to work without pay is un-American.”

U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said at a conference of education reporters on Monday that the school funding crisis in Detroit — like the drinking water crisis in nearby Flint, Mich., — is a symptom of “a systematic lack of investment in high-needs communities and high-needs kids.”