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WINSTON-SALEM – Talks of Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools trimming $5.2 million in the next fiscal year has educators riled up.

School employees ranging from teachers to bus drivers packed the auditorium at Parkland High School Wednesday night for a rally against the budget cuts.

"All of these cuts affect students in the long run, and that's what we're here to provide, services for students across K-12 and all of this affects them too as well as teachers," teacher Donna Gouge said.

"This $5.2 million worth of cuts discussed last night alone at the school board was dropped in their lap by the state General Assembly," Tripp Jeffers, president of the Forsyth County Association of Educators, said.

Officials with the Forsyth County Association of Educators say the No. 1 thing employees can do is contact their state leaders.

"We are asking them to activate themselves, activate the community and then begin to agitate our legislators by e-mailing senators and House members in Raleigh by calling them, every day if necessary, to force them to make the right decisions for public education," Jeffers said.

And that's exactly what many of these employees plan to do.

"I'm looking forward to getting to talk to legislators and helping them to see the light of how important education is and that it's not a place where you can go to and cut the budget," teacher Kevin Cornell said.

The school board will take a final vote on the budget at the end of April.