At a special board of education meeting held on March 19, the proposed budget for the 2003-2004 school year was presented. The presentation was made by Assistant Superintendent for Business John Lorentz, who explained that changes are still continuing to be made and that the board has until April 15 before it has to officially adopt the budget for voter approval.

Lorentz explained that the three components that make up the 2003-2004 budget are revenue, expenditures, and program. The current issues the district is facing in preparing the budget include state aid, the economic climate, assessments, the transition of sixth graders to the middle school starting in September, debt services, fee schedules and state requirement systems.

In preparing the budget, the district has been working to stay within set parameters, which for the most part focus around the sixth grade move to Howitt. All budget appropriations are to be frozen at 2002-2003 levels. Lorentz explained that from the very start of the budget process, which began in the fall, the district knew there would be some challenges.

"We knew that we had to be very conservative in our budget this year. We made every effort, from the very start, of freezing expenditures everywhere we could and even reviewing retirements and new initiatives to see whether or not we could continue them," he explained. "We were working very hard to try to come up with a budget that would curtail every expenditure that we could without dramatically impacting our program."

A huge focus of the budget for the upcoming school year was the transition of the sixth grade class to Howitt Middle School, which would make it necessary for the district to provide a secondary program to the sixth graders. Lorentz explained that the process isn't as easy as moving every sixth grade from the elementary schools. He said that the district re-evaluated the staffing that was put together for the move of the class, and that the budget was cut by $400,000 due to the district's practical reinventing of the way the program was to be presented.

Since it is secondary, more teachers are required because the program differs from that of the elementary program. The students will have a nine-period day and will be educated by several teachers throughout the day.

In addition to knowing that they had to accommodate the sixth grade class transition, Lorentz added that the district also had to make up the $3 million that would be lost due to the lack of state aid.

"The first cut of the budget took significant amounts of money in just about every area," he said. "Every director was directed to cut their budgets. The initial parameters were to freeze budgets, then when the governor's proposal came out and Farmingdale was to lose $3 million, we went back to the directors and asked them to reduce their budgets by 10 percent."

After cutting costs in all areas possible, the district originally had a budget which presented a 6.9 percent increase over the 2002-2003 budget. This budget incorporated the teachers' retirement fund, the middle school transition, and all contractual obligations. To cut the budget even more, the district looked over all the items they had control over that are not mandated and reduced those by 10 percent across the board.

Lorentz added that some initiatives were also delayed, such as the installation of Net TVs in all classrooms and the rewiring of the networks in the district's elementary school buildings.

"We really looked at everything from the bottom up to try to control expenditures. We know that economic times are tough," Lorentz said. "The real issue [is] how we're going to continue to deliver our Farmingdale programs to the kids at a cost that shows that we've tried to control our costs. Given that we have millions of dollars of staffing to do with the middle school change, we really feel that we've done what we should have done."

After a regular board meeting held April 2, additional reductions were made to bring the proposed budget for next year to $107,682,000. This figure represents a 6.7 percent increase over last year. The board still has several items to discuss at upcoming meetings, in addition to any comments and/or concerns that were presented by residents at the public input hearing on April 9. The board will officially adopt the budget for voter approval on Tuesday, April 15. The budget will be made available to residents on May 6, which will be followed by another public hearing on May 13. The district-wide budget vote will be on May 20 at Howitt East Gymnasium from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

April 15

Special Board of Education Meeting to adopt budget for voter approval

April 21

Board of Education Nominating Petitions due

April 29

Special Board of Education meeting, vote on BOCES administrative budget

May 6

Budget available to public in schools and in public library

May 7

Regular Board of Education Meeting

May 10

Voter registration, Howitt East Lobby, noon to 9 p.m.

May 13

Public Hearing regarding 2002-2004 budget

May 15

Last day to register to vote, Howitt Middle School

May 20

Budget vote and election, Howitt East Gymnasium, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.