Dave Jamieson/HuffPost West Virginia teachers went on strike almost exactly a year ago, with a contingent of them converging on the state capitol in Charleston.

West Virginia teachers are deciding this week whether to authorize their unions to lead another massive walkout, a little less than a year after they started a cascade of historic teacher strikes around the country.

The ongoing discontent among the teachers is directly related to last year’s unrest. The Republican-controlled state Senate has agreed to give school employees another raise, but only with some major strings attached. These include the creation of charter schools in the state and a new voucher-like system that would steer public money to private schools.

The education omnibus bill that cleared the chamber by an 18-16 margin on Monday includes a number of conservative proposals that GOP legislators have put forth in the past. But now lawmakers have coupled them with much of what educators fought for last year, and teacher representatives say the legislation would ultimately divert money away from public schools.

“We feel like it’s retaliation for what we did last spring,” said Fred Albert, president of the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia, one of the state’s two main teachers unions.

Those unions and the union representing school support staff have asked their local affiliates to hold votes on whether to green-light walkouts or other protests in response to the legislation. Workers are casting ballots by Friday.

Union leaders suspect the vast majority of their members will approve of walking off the job in the event the most controversial measures appear likely to become law. No date for a walkout has been set.

The education package passed in the Senate headed Tuesday to the House, which also has a Republican majority. But House members serve shorter terms ― two years, as opposed to four ― and may be more amenable to pressure from teachers and other school employees in their districts.

It’s likely that the bill that passed the Senate will not survive in the same form. Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, has already said he would veto it if it did.

Even so, Kym Randolph, spokeswoman for the West Virginia Education Association, said they consider the package a serious threat, noting that it only takes a simple majority in each legislative chamber to override a governor’s veto.

Randolph said teachers want to avoid something as drastic as a walkout, but feel “incensed” by the omnibus bill and the way it was fast-tracked through the upper chamber. As reported by The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported, Senate leaders used an arcane procedural maneuver to bypass a review of the legislation by a finance committee once it became obvious there weren’t enough votes for it to clear that panel.