In Melanie Kerber's eyes, the Sto-Rox School District has been a huge success in recent years.

"In 2002, there were six to eight fights a week," Dr. Kerber, the district's high school principal for the last three years, said at a school board meeting Thursday. She said a top student that year flunked out of community college.

This year, she said, the hallways have been calm. Half the graduates are going on to college or the military. And last year's valedictorian "is now burning it up" at Thiel College in Mercer County, Dr. Kerber said.

Can such success continue if the district furloughs one of every five teachers? She doesn't think so.

"I hear about other districts laying people off; that's because they have someone to lay off. We need our teachers."

Dr. Kerber got no argument from any board members, or from Superintendent Fran Serenka.

"Our students can't flourish if they don't have the support they need," Ms. Serenka said. "You can't do it minus 29 teachers."

But you also can't pay teachers with money you don't have. So the school board passed a preliminary 2009-10 budget that cuts 29 of the district's 131 teaching positions, and also cuts seven support positions.

"I was here when jobs were cut before," board Vice President Lenora Karpa said. "My kids were in school then, with 35 students in a classroom. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now."

Sto-Rox solicitor Gregory Gleason expects the number of layoffs will be "much smaller" than the 29 cuts in positions under discussion now once some of the expected money is added to the budget. "I don't think anybody doubts there will be stimulus money that will be provided," he said.

But even a best-case-scenario budget prepared earlier in the spring called for the loss of 11 positions.

In addition to money problems, Mr. Gleason said the district also has sustained enrollment decline, although he did not have figures available immediately.

State law specifies situations in which teachers can be laid off, and none of them includes district finances. They include a "substantial decrease" in enrollment; curtailment or alteration of the educational program, with approval from the state Department of Education; consolidation of schools; and reorganization resulting in new school districts.

Emily Leader, deputy chief counsel of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said school districts are not obligated to fill vacancies left by retirements. However, concerning both tenured and nontenured teachers, she said, "You can never furlough for economic reasons alone."

Wythe Keever, spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, said, "The public school code doesn't allow furloughs or layoffs for any economic reasons period."

Multiple factors have brought Sto-Rox to this state.

One is the nature of the district itself. It includes McKees Rocks and Stowe, communities devastated by the industrial collapse of the 1980s. The tax base is small, and has shrunk by $20 million since reassessments began in 2002. It also includes four public housing plans, which contribute to high turnover rates and high levels of special education, special needs and at-risk children.

Those aspects put great demand on educational and administrative systems, and Sto-Rox administrators and board members have been vocal advocates of the need to reform special-education funding in particular.

Another factor in the district's struggle is the budgetary crisis at the state level, which has cast doubt on the distribution of federal stimulus money.

On its Web site, the state Department of Education estimates Sto-Rox's share at $1.7 million, but the governor and Legislature have not agreed on the allocations. Even Sto-Rox's first portion of federal money -- an estimated $500,000 in special education and Title 1 money already sent to the state -- has been delayed until it gets legislative approval.

A third factor is the string of unexpected costs that wiped out the district's fund balance this year. Those include a four-fold increase in charter school tuition since Propel Montour opened in Kennedy in 2006, the failure of both sewer pumps at the elementary school this year and the discovery of mold beneath carpets at the middle school this year -- as well as an $860,000 deficit in the district's cafeteria fund.

The district last week went to court to get permission to borrow $3 million so it could meet payroll through the end of this school year.

Finally, Sto-Rox is already fourth-highest of 501 school districts in the state Education Department's measurement of "tax effort," a calculation that looks at school taxes as a portion of community resources.

Opinions on the board are not universal, however. Board member Ed Maritz has been a consistent critic of rising administrative costs in the district and noted that the proposed cuts do not include any administrators.

"I can name three positions in the business office and one support position that could be subject to furlough," he said.

Other board members were less specific but echoed the idea that teachers would not be the only ones cut.

"If we're going to have to cut 20 percent of the teaching staff, we're going to have to cut 20 percent all over," Ms. Karpa said.