Sto-Rox school board president Kevin Kochirka wants the district to get together with Duquesne, Wilkinsburg, Clairton and some of the other "have-nots" to start an organized campaign for change.

School director Ed Maritz wants to go after legislators and make funding inequities a campaign issue.

The district's business manager Chuck Lanna wants to take Allegheny County to court, and perhaps the Commonwealth, too.

And board member Jean Mayes wants to warn neighboring districts that if Sto-Rox, which is comprised of McKees Rocks and Stowe, goes under financially its problems will pass to them.

"Everyone looks down on us, our 'Stowe kids,' our 'little monsters,'" Ms. Mayes said, seething at the attitude. "If they don't want them in their schools, they'd better help us."

No matter what the approach, however, the bottom line is the same: Sto-Rox is heading into another budget crisis caused by forces beyond its control and people involved are sick of it. And, they think they deserve some help.

"It's a civil rights issue," Dr. Maritz said at a budget meeting last week. "It's a form of educational apartheid, penalizing children just because they live in a poor community."

Mr. Lanna spent much of the meeting laying out some of the harsh funding realities:

• The district encompasses four public housing plans, which are exempt from property taxes. Approximately 320 of its 1,400 students live there. If it cost just $10,000 each to educate them, that would be $3.2 million, and the cost is actually a good bit more because a high percentage of those children qualify for special education and emotional support programs.

To educate those 320 children, the district is expecting an $11,000 state subsidy, plus whatever it collects in earned income tax from the people living in the housing projects.

If residents of the 431 public housing units earned $30,000 per unit, the 1.5 percent tax would yield about $194,000. The property itself is tax-exempt.

So the children who are in Sto-Rox because of decisions made by the county housing authority create about a $3 million shortfall for the district, and perhaps a good bit more.

That's why Mr. Lanna wants to sue.

"They were the ones who decided to put the projects here," he said at a recent budget meeting. "I think they should help pay to educate the children."

• According to superintendent Fran Serenka, the state helps fund special education at $5,000 per child. But it bases that on the assumption that 12 percent - the statewide average - of the children in each district will qualify for the extra help. However, Sto-Rox has 28 percent of its children in special ed so it is short about $1.12 million in subsidies.

Dr. Maritz, who has testified to legislators about the inequities of special education funding, said the state changed to the current funding formula in 1992, and that the sudden loss of about $1 million in revenue sent Sto-Rox into "distressed" status and ultimately into state control for much of that decade.

• Tuition payments, according to Mr. Lanna, have increased from $900,000 to $3.5 million in five years. Mr. Lanna said Sto-Rox pays tuition to 38 different schools. Some are for children who need care that is beyond the district's capacity, but many are court-ordered placements for children who have run afoul of the law.

Mr. Lanna could not provide numbers, but said he frequently gets bills for the schooling of children he's never heard of. "It turns out their grandmother lives in the district, or their mother moved here or something," he said.

• The state uses its basic education subsidy to try to balance out costs for poor districts, and Sto-Rox got more than $8 million from the state in that program. But Dr. Serenka said the state's own numbers indicate that it's not enough.

She said the state's landmark "costing-out" study, published in 2007, calculated that Sto-Rox's funding was $2 million less than what it needed to provide an adequate education.

The idea was that the state would use that study to pump more money into the needy schools, and Mr. Lanna said the district got a bump of $238,000 in 2008 with the promise of more to come.

But the state had a budget crisis of its own last year, and ended up plugging in some one-time federal stimulus money to make up the difference.

Mr. Lanna said that based on the now-petering-out stimulus money, Sto-Rox will actually see a reduction of $457,000 this year. He said Gov. Ed Rendell's proposed budget would add $579,000, but recent history leaves that number in question.

"I'm not even writing that down," Ms. Mayes said.

• The only revenue source the district can control is real estate taxes. Other taxes - earned income, emergency services and mercantile - already are at their maximum rates and show no signs of growth.

But Sto-Rox's 25-mill tax rate is already seventh-highest in the county and its tax effort - a measurement used in the costing-out study to balance payments and ability to pay - was fourth-highest in the state.

And even if the school board was willing to raise the millage, the impoverished tax base means a one-mill increase yields only about $250,000 in revenue.

Overall, the situation has Mr. Kochirka pondering dramatic moves to create awareness.

"I'm becoming more of the thinking that if we're going to go bankrupt anyway, I would rather go into bankruptcy ourselves and tell the story," he said.

Mr. Kochirka said he has talked repeatedly to legislators, but that while they are sympathetic, the district lacks political clout.

"The upper 50 percent are making out, getting more than they should," he said. "But they're the big districts and the wealthy districts, and they control the votes and they don't care."

Dr. Maritz echoed those thoughts in an interview this week, and added that the impoverished districts might have a chance to make some noise since this is an election year for state lawmakers. "We need to get Wilkinsburg to the table with us, and Clairton, and Duquesne and some of the others in the same boat," he said.

He also echoed Ms. Mayes's warning that neighboring districts will have to pick up the ball if Sto-Rox fails.

"If your neighbor's house was on fire, you would not sit by and watch it burn," he said. "You'd get a bucket and try to throw some water on it."

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