If Howdy Manning were tossing and turning some restless night, here's a thought he might keep coming back to: "You can't get blood out of a turnip." That bit of folk wisdom pretty well captures a crucial aspect of North Carolina's school finance dilemma.

To the tart-tongued Superior Court judge (properly known as Howard E. Manning Jr.) has fallen the task of prodding state leaders to come up with more money for schools in the state's struggling rural counties.

Those counties already tend to tax themselves more heavily than their urban counterparts. But because property values are lower, they have less revenue to show for it. Hence the bloodless turnip analogy -- which, as it happens, was offered up by the Public School Forum of North Carolina in its latest examination of the state's school money picture.

The forum each year crunches the numbers on county property values, tax rates and local school expenditures. When the crank is turned, what comes out is a statistical portrait of haves and have-nots. Essentially, it's the same wealth and funding gap that led a decade ago to the epic Leandro lawsuit seeking a fairer shake for the poor districts and their students -- the case over which Manning now rides herd at the state Supreme Court's say-so.

To gauge counties' affluence, the forum compares their taxable real estate with the number of students in their public schools.

The 10 most fortunate counties, by that measure, boast an average of about $1.09 million in taxable property per student. Those counties tend to be along the coast and in the mountains, where vacation homes and retirees are plentiful and school enrollments are relatively small: Dare (the best-off), followed by Watauga, Brunswick, Macon, Jackson, Avery, Carteret, Transylvania, Clay and Currituck.

At the other end of the scale are counties afflicted by a familiar set of painful economic symptoms -- lost jobs, declining tobacco sales and so on. The roster (at 91st out of 100 counties statewide) begins with Vance, and continues with Richmond, Onslow, Scotland, Cumberland, Greene, Harnett, Gates, Hoke and Robeson in last place. Their comparable figure for property wealth per student is just a little over $246,000. One might say, welcome to the heart of Eastern North Carolina!

Clearly, it would take a mighty effort on the part of taxpayers in those counties to keep pace in the revenue game. Many in fact make such an effort.

The forum put the average property tax burden in the 10 poorest counties at 75 cents per $100 of property value. In the best-off counties, the average tax rate was only 41 cents per $100 -- 19 cents below the state average. Still, because they were sitting on so much property wealth, the rich counties could generate four times the revenue that the poor ones could.

Making matters worse, the poor counties tended to have much larger obligations under the Medicaid program. So not only were they able to raise less, but an abnormally large chunk of what they did raise was siphoned off into the social services pipeline instead of being available for schools.

It's hardly a surprise that the forum found comparable trends in actual school outlays. School districts in the wealthiest counties, the group said, were spending an average of $43,420 more per classroom than were the schools in counties with the least resources.

Some struggling counties still managed to put themselves on an honor roll of sorts, by virtue of their school funding effort compared with their ability to pay.

Atop the "relative effort" list are a collection of hard-pressed counties trying to squeeze the proverbial turnip -- Scotland, Gates, Pasquotank, Robeson, Northampton, Martin, Cumberland, Chowan, Halifax. Oh, Orange County also belongs on that list, at No. 5 -- but then Orange (thanks largely to the special school tax in Chapel Hill-Carrboro) is the statewide paragon when it comes to shelling out for public education.

On that score, give Durham respectable marks, with a No. 25 ranking. Wake County, however, can be seen as coasting on its good fortune. Its schools are some of the best in the state, if not the best, but it attains those superior results on the strength of a ho-hum relative funding effort -- 74th on the forum's list. What a tribute to the school system's students and staff.

At least Wake's students aren't likely to find themselves behind the eight-ball recognized by the courts in the Leandro case. The state constitution gives all students, wherever they live, the right to obtain an education good enough to get them started down the path of productive citizenship. In the poorest counties, that's not happening. Many factors are to blame, but a common denominator is money. The counties can't raise enough, and the state, despite some progress, doesn't provide enough.

That's why Judge Manning is so determined that the powers in Raleigh must come through. The rights, and futures, of thousands of school children are on the line. Turnips? Choose your recipe -- but don't look for blood, or money.

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