SÃO PAULO, Brazil — With cities across the nation heaving in the biggest protests in decades, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil convened an emergency meeting of top aides on Friday and announced that she would pursue measures touching on some of the grievances stirring the unrest, including a national transportation overhaul and the use of all oil royalties for education.

But she has floated her ambitious proposal before — to use oil revenues to improve the beleaguered public schools — only to run up against stiff resistance from state governors who rely on the money to meet their budgets, leaving her ability to enact it in doubt.

Her pledge came as the government put forward other small measures as well, like injecting new money to bolster transportation and pledging to better scrutinize financial corruption within its ranks.

“Brazil fought a lot to become a democratic country, and it is fighting a lot to become a country that it is more just,” Ms. Rousseff said.