CHARLESTON, W.V. ? When Katie Cole recently missed three days of work due to a medical emergency, her West Virginia school was stretched too thin to provide her classroom with a qualified substitute teacher. Instead, her room full of preschool special-needs children was helmed by a teacher’s aide with the help of a parent.

“We just don’t have enough substitutes,” said Cole, who’s 24 and in her second year of teaching.

Striking teachers with stories like Cole’s have flooded the halls of the West Virginia capitol since last week. Schools across the state have been shut down for three days in an unprecedented show of force by teachers and public employees in all counties. The workers and their unions are demanding more funding for the public employee health plan and raises significant enough to offset several lean years without them.

But in interviews, school employees who traveled from across the state to Charleston said the fight was about much more than their paychecks. West Virginia is one of the few U.S. states with a falling population. As the state grapples with a severe teacher shortage, many educators worry their younger peers will continue to flee for greener pastures, with long-term consequences for successive generations of students.

A series of business tax cuts have left the state with little money to give public servants who’ve been waiting for meaningful raises. West Virginia now ranks 48th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in teacher pay, and it was one of just five states to see average teacher pay go down in 2016, according to the National Education Association. Of West Virginia’s 55 counties, more than half border a state with better teacher pay. And the state was trying to fill 700 vacant positions as of last spring.

“There’s just no reason to stay here, especially the ones who aren’t married,” said Patty Hamilton, a second-grade teacher with 30 years at the same elementary school. “It’s very sad that this is happening.”

As one protester’s sign outside the capitol succinctly put it, “Country Roads: Leading teachers out of West Virginia.”