MIAMI -- Miami-Dade schoolteachers, fighting to save their raises in a district-wide budget deficit, learned Tuesday that the financial gap has grown larger.

The state’s lower revenue projections in a slumping economy has led Governor Charlie Crist to forecast another $40 million cut from the district for the 2008-2009 budget.

The meeting Tuesday was a scheduled negotiating session between the district and the teachers’ union wrangling over whether $72 million in scheduled raises for teachers and other employees should be cut or lowered to meet the budget deficit.

“We’re trying to find as much as possible so that we can get something to people at some point during the year. That’s the compromise we’re trying to reach,” said Ofelia San Pedro, Miami-Dade Public School District’s chief of business operations and its lead negotiator.

“ This is unacceptable,” said Libby Navarette, attorney for the teachers’ union. “Figure out a way to find the money. You have got it,” she told district officials.

By state law, the district must forge a balanced budget for the 2008-2009 school year by mid-September.

So far, the district has cut more than $200 million in salaries and programs districtwide, as well as 2000 jobs.

Administrators’ raises due to take effect July 1st have also been suspended. Superintendent Rudy Crew said he will forego his bonus.

But teachers are convinced administrators have lost sight of how millions of dollars it disperses throughout the district are actually spent. Complicating matters, teachers’ frustration that their profession makes a third of some administrators, though they won unprecedented raises in their recent contract under Dr. Crew.

Negotiations over the teachers’ raises resumes Wednesday.

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