Farmingdale School District Details Preliminary Budget Parameters

 administrators kicked off 2011 budget discussions during the Dec. 8 board meeting at , focusing on their objectives and the current fiscal and educational environment.

"Our current financial situation puts us in a good place, but it is not the best place to be," said John Lorentz, superintendent of the Farmingdale School District. "Our goal is to establish Farmingdale as a high achieving school district and that will be based on school district performance. That is not going to change regardless of what the fiscal situation is."

The district defined the long-term budget objectives as creating sustainable programs with appropriate flexibility, seeking protection from state aid and other fluctuations and ensuring a predictable and acceptable tax levy for residents.

"Programs are the basis of our budget," Lorentz said. "The state and federal government are making decisions about the programs we are going to deliver and we are making a budget without really knowing what the programs are going to be in the future."

District revenue, which funds the programs, comes from taypayer dollars and state aid, a source that has been "unreliable," according to Lorentz.

Fiscal obstacles from the state this year including the governor's proposed tax cap, STAR reduction and reconsideration of some previous budget actions, which will shift the costs of some programs onto the individual school districts.

Other challenges the district will face are increases in medical premiums and the teacher and employee retirement funds, federal aid termination, fallen interest earnings and additional losses in state aid as the state closes a budget gap.

The administrators also presented the changing educational standards amidst these financial obstacles.

"We are dealing with a very different program environment. The national standards, now known as the common core standards, have now been adopted by the state," said Joan Ripley, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. "They are prescribing a state-wide curriculum that is going to be ready by 2014 that we will be required to follow."

In addition, Ripley described that the state's shifting focus on charter schools, college readiness and on revising assessments will require district attention.

"In addition to all of the fiscal issues the state is creating, they are making more mandates at the same time and that causes a lot of challenges for us," she said.

From 2002-06 the district experienced three out of four first time budget defeats and the average tax levy increase was 7.96 percent. From 2006-10 the district experienced no budget defeats and an average tax levy increase of 2.3 percent.