MIAMI -- The Miami-Dade County school district has hit another snag as it tries to make up a $356 million budget shortfall.

It is illegal to run the school system in the red, so Superintendent Alberto Carvalho asked all employees to take two or three days off between now and June 30 and get paid for the days in the next fiscal year.

"What they're saying is that they're not going to meet payroll unless we give back money. There is enough money in our system to meet payroll, and what they're really trying to do is fill reserves," said United Teachers of Dade President Karen Aronowitz.

By law, a school district must have 2 percent of its annual budget in an emergency or rainy day fund. In Florida, rainy days can mean hurricanes.

Florida is also currently going through a financial hurricane. Tax revenues are down, meaning less money for schools. Per-student funding has dropped from about $7,100 last year to $6,800 this year, according to the Florida Education Finance Program.

"At a time when the president has assured everybody that the stimulus money is coming, that the money is supposed to prevent layoffs now, then don't take salary from people who have so little to begin with," Aronowitz said.

School bus drivers, cafeteria workers and others who belong to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have agreed to concessions. School administrators, maintenance workers and school police have done the same.

The United Teachers of Dade said it would not make any more concessions. The teachers' union is angry that the teachers have not received the pay raises they were promised for this year, and now they said they are not going to voluntarily give up three or four days of work with merely a promise that they will get paid months from now.

"We already have budged on the contract. We're not paid our salaries, and now they're even trying to take more money away from the people who are in our schools and working for children every single day," Aronowitz said.

Carvalho, who was in Tallahassee Tuesday evening, said through a spokesman that if the teachers will go along with the other unions, it will prevent layoffs and save programs in the schools in art, music and languages.

On Wednesday, education supporters will rally in Tallahassee, demanding more money. A group of parents and teachers boarded a bus Tuesday morning at Ronald Regan Senior High School in Doral for the trip to the state capital in an effort to end budget cuts to schools.