Reading the writing on the wall, Corry officials say they’ve taken many steps over the past few years to become more efficient and fiscally prudent. They shuttered three elementary schools, reduced their consumables budget by half, and reduced 50 employees through attrition — increasing class size to compensate.

The board authorized the cuts in an attempt to keep local property taxes in check, hoping to make the area more attractive to prospective homebuyers.

But with a less generous allotment of state funding coming in, Corry fully anticipates that the burden on local taxpayers will continue to grow — especially as costs for transportation, employee pensions and special-education services remain large.

But demanding more from taxpayers has become an increasingly tough ask in a community that’s seen factories shuttered and opportunities diminished.

“A lot of the well-paying jobs have moved out. So the poverty level has grown. It makes everything a little more difficult,” said Corry High School principal Kelly Cragg, a lifelong resident. He’s specifically concerned about the effect on the town’s senior citizens.

“The older people’s tax keeps going up, and their money doesn’t keep going up. They just keep squeezing the belt tighter, and it’s not fair,” he said. “I don’t know what the answer is.”

To Nichols, the new school funding formula counts as one more in a string of state policy decisions with which he disagrees.

The state’s charter school law undercuts the district’s ability to control costs, he says. For instance, when Corry closed an elementary school in an outlying part of the district in an attempt to rightsize, a charter applied to take its place. The district then had to spend precious resources in its ultimately successful attempt to deny the application.

The state’s cyber charter law is particularly hateful in his eyes, bad for the students he sees cycle through the schools, as well as the district’s budget.

“Nothing’s happening to them except we’re making a payment for them to the charter school,” he said. “And then we have to remediate them when they come back, or we have to face high discipline problems.”

And while he says he’s sympathetic to districts like Erie City that have long been on the short side of the state’s funding logic, he rejects the idea that the new formula is “fair.”

He cited, for instance, the fact that a significantly wealthier district in Erie County received a larger increase in state funds this year compared to Corry’s allotment. This occurred largely because the state is now counting actual student enrollment, but it smacks of injustice to a district like Corry — home to a large federal low-income housing program and weighted by a legacy of distress, where some families lack access to even basic utilities.

“We still have — not many families anymore — families without running water, inside toilets,” he said.

Driving around the district with Nichols, we came upon a trailer park where bedsheets were used as curtains — another neighborhood in the center of town filled with dilapidated apartments.

“So we have a significant number of families where grandpa was on welfare, dad’s on welfare, and now the children are headed for welfare,” he said. “That’s really what some kids even call it. ‘That’s my dad’s career. We’re on welfare.’ And they will tell you that.”

At the same time Corry is stressing over its economic future, just as in Titusville, educators say student need is increasing.

“Now you have kids who go home one night, there’s different people in their house. They don’t know who’s coming or going. They move in with ‘so-and-so’ because they’re out of money. They have, I don’t know, 10, 12 people living in the house,” said Susan Barra, Corry’s vo-tech supervisor and former guidance counselor. “Maybe you had a kid that was a little bit depressed 20 years ago. Now we have kids who are actively suicidal who need mental health treatment all the time.”

This all gets at a central tension in Pennsylvania school funding.

The districts that are the biggest winners in the new state formula are some of the largest urban ones with even greater concentrations of poverty than Corry or Titusville — many of whom could look to the rural Northwest wishing they could provide what these districts have historically been able to offer.

In order to appease both the poor urban districts and the poor, mostly rural “hold harmless” districts, advocates say the state should dramatically increase the state education budget each year, with calls for up to $400 million boosts annually. This, they say, would create a more equitable and adequate system overall.

But that sort of financial commitment would require a sizable chunk of new revenue from state taxpayers, which many in the legislature say would be untenable. For context, through three contentious budget cycles under Governor Tom Wolf, the state has upped the basic education subsidy by a total of about $470 million.

Without a dramatic change, year by year, it’s likely that districts like Corry and Titusville will trim, tighten and/or tax locally in order to adjust to their new normal.

“Any cuts we make from this point on are going to penalize kids, penalize kids’ families,” said Nichols.

On the Titusville football field, concerns about long-term school district budgeting could scant be found on homecoming night. The players had their hands full with more pressing matters. Under a dusky autumn sky they grunted and scraped against rival Cochranton, but fell well short of their hopes, losing in a rout before going completely winless on the season.

Superintendent Jez, though — committed to the idea of renewal — couldn’t help but find a silver lining.

“Our kids are young and little,” she said. “I think our average weight is about 170 pounds this year. So, you know, our line is not very big, but they have heart.”