ATLANTA – Gov. Nathan Deal’s proposed budget includes 3 percent raises for Georgia teachers, more funding for pre-K teachers and tuition for students interested in studying industrial maintenance.

But Deal said he’ll wait another year before acting on other key recommendations of his Education Reform Commission, such as a new education funding formula and changes to how teachers are paid.

In his annual State of the State address, Deal took a moment Wednesday to reassure teachers that the focus on reform is more about improving the system than them.

Concern grew in the education community over a proposal by the commission to tie some of teachers’ pay to their success in the classroom – an idea that Deal has said he supports.

The Republican governor also issued a thinly veiled threat to school districts that don’t use added revenue in next year’s budget – about $300 million – to peel back furloughs or boost teacher pay.

About 6 percent of the state’s districts have not used previous increases to scale back or end furloughs, he said, citing a state Department of Education survey. A list of those districts wasn’t available Wednesday.

“With the additional funding this year, furloughs should be a thing of the past, and teachers should receive that 3 percent pay raise,” Deal said in his speech from the House floor.

If that doesn’t happen, he said it will be “more difficult” next year to give districts more freedom in how they spend state dollars, as the commission recommends.

Deal is due to release a proposed budget Thursday afternoon. He provided a glimpse of it in his speech.

Many lawmakers praised the governor’s plan to issue an executive order creating a Teacher Advisory Committee. A recurring complaint about the reform commission’s deliberations is the lack of teacher involvement.

House Speaker David Ralston, for one, said he relayed to the governor his concerns about teachers being “left out of the process or not represented sufficiently.”

Sen. Charlie Bethel, R-Dalton, said “it only makes sense to engage the practitioners – the people doing the work – as you refine your plan.”

Bethel and other lawmakers said Deal’s approach sets the right pace – slow and deliberate – for implementing the commission’s recommendations.

Ralston said he would like the group’s findings to be thoroughly vetted by the House and Senate education committees, with plenty of input from teachers.

He said the process need not become over-complicated. He suggested lawmakers start by simply reading the commission’s lengthy report, which was released last month.

“I don’t need a formal way of doing that,” Ralston said after the governor’s speech. “I just need some quiet time with my feet propped up, so that would be a way for them to start.”

Deal is not waiting on some proposed changes, however. His budget, for example, includes money for a new pay model aimed at retaining pre-K teachers and adding assistant teachers.

In his speech, the governor also defended his decision not expand Medicaid – a position that rankles Democrats.

Deal said the cost to run state’s insurance program for the poor has grown more than 15 percent over four years. His proposed budget for next year sets aside about $3.1 billion for Medicaid.

“And that’s without expansion,” he said. Adding an expansion would have cost another $209 million next year – a number that “would only continue to grow exponentially,” he said.

It’s an issue that the state’s minority party continues to champion.

“If you don’t have a healthy state, you don’t have a good economy,” said Rep. Dexter Sharper, D-Valdosta. “We all hurt when the citizens are not healthy.”

When Deal releases a proposed budget, it will begin the Legislature’s process of divvying state dollars, which will be made livelier this year due to the state’s recent revenue growth.

“You’ve got more people out there saying, ‘Well, we need this and we need that,’” said Rep. Jason Shaw, R-Lakeland, who serves on the Economic Development Appropriations Committee.

“You just have to look at each one individually and figure out how you’re going to spend what we’ve got,” he said.

But when legislators pick up their copy of the budget, the first thing they’ll likely look for is the impact back home – like whether Valdosta will receive money for that new library.

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.