School Tax Burden Shifts to Twp. Residents Under 2013-14 Budget

The Morris School District Board of Education approved its preliminary 2013-14 school budget at Monday night's meeting following a presentation from Superintendent Dr. Thomas Ficarra.

"This [budget] is up 2 percent [from last year]," he said. "We're happy that we were able to provide the programming we did, that we maintained all the regular school programs without any cuts and still managed to stay at the 2 percent cap."

The budget is set at $105,427,066, with $101,721,741 as general fund expenses, $2,642,995 as special revenue and $1,062,330 for debt service. There will be a general fund tax levy of $82,423,847 and a debt service tax levy of $863,548.

"If you live in the town, your taxes will actually go down by $67 and if you live in the township, they will go up by $165," he said. "That's because of equalized value, which is something that the state determines and it's their determination of the value of the property in the town and in the township. They add them both together and come up with a percentage, and the town's percentage of the property value went down and the township's percentage went up. That shifts an extra tax burden onto the township of $408,000."

Ficarra said the state uses a formula to determine the tax shift that is out of the control of the board.

"It's strictly done by the state of New Jersey, and over the years we have seen years where the township was constantly getting the better end of the swing and now it's turned back to the town," he said. "We'd like to see it be static, but, unfortunately, it's been changing every year."

Ficarra said that some of the over-arching concepts used to craft the budget include maintaining the integrity of the regular school day program, providing an extensive summer school program, enhancing professional development and not borrowing money for capital projects. 

One issue that Ficarra stressed was technology. Not only is each building in the district equipped with adequate wireless Internet connection, but there is also a 1:1 iPad initiative in the district.

"You know that [the students] will be faced with a job that requires technology, and we are making sure our students are prepared for that," Ficarra said. "Next year we will be providing iPads to incoming seventh-graders, our current seventh-graders have iPads in the pilot. So if we give it to the current sixth graders, next year that'll be seventh and eighth grade and we will also be providing them to ninth graders."

To pay for the initiative, Ficarra said the district is planning to use money gained through the Interdistrict Public School Choice program, which has other districts paying tuition costs for students who choose to attend Morris schools instead.

"We've budgeted for next year $1,126,948. That's $1,126,948 in revenue that we will not be budgeting to raise tax dollars for. We call this helping ourselves; we're always looking for ways to continue to provide excellent programs while simultaneously producing no cost to the taxpayer," he said

Ficarra also spoke of the Partnership of Assessing Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) testing. He said that PARCC testing, where students use a computer and are challenged in ways that they're not with pencil-and-paper tests, will be coming to New Jersey in 2014.

The budget also includes additional staffing, Ficarra said.

"At Morristown High School, we have a guidance counselor…this person will have a specific task to target students who we feel could be pushed further: students who are choosing not to participate in honors, not take an extra AP course or any AP course, students who are coasting through school that we know have the ability to go on to something better than the current level they're working at," he said.

He also said there will be a multiple disabilities teacher and two part-time teacher aides at the high school. 

"Additionally this year we will be expanding the preschool by 30 children," Ficarra said. "That's going to be one teacher, two aides, one bus driver and one bus aide. That's the program that's probably received the most positive research in terms of anything that's been tried in closing the achievement gap and helping students to advance.

Since the district does not receive a significant amount of money to fuel the program, Ficarra said the preschool program will be expanded with local funds. 

"It's a little bit like we're going to be spending money today and hopefully we'll be saving money tomorrow," he said. "We feel that this will pay big dividends going forward; that we'll have fewer kids with basic skills [and] special ed, and in the long run we'll be saving money."

Under the 2013-14 budget, Ficarra said the district would like to continue to support interscholastic and intramural athletics, as well as fine and visual performing arts.

"Not everyone is a shining-star athlete and not everyone can make a cut-team, but we certainly have enough activities at the high school so that if you have the desire to participate and you can keep your grades up, then we have something for you to do at night instead of being on the streets," he said.

Other projects that Ficarra spoke of included budgeting money to explore a tech education wing; chiseling out the crumbling cement and putting in new cement at the high school, which will help with the life of the building for years; and having an expansion/renovation, including the construction of five new classrooms, at the Frelinghuysen School.

"Over the last couple of years, we've received approximately 200 additional students at Frelinghuysen," he said. "We're not sure where they're coming from but it's obvious that people are attracted to the job that's being done at that middle school."

One recurring theme in Ficarra's presentation was that the district has been operating smoothly, financially, for over a decade.

"Only one penny of every dollar that we spend goes to debt," he said. "In this day and age we all know what the argument is at the state, federal and global level about size of debt. We have not taken on debt and we have done a tremendous amount of work over the last 11 years."

He also said the district has done this through budgeting money each year to maintain the buildings in small projects.

Ficarra also mentioned that state aid has gone up this year and will be at $6,317,167 for the 2013-2014 school year.

"State aid has gone up this year, we're happy about that," he said. "It's been on an upward trend, but it's still not where it was back in 2008-2009, but we have an increase in state aid. That certainly has helped us and enabled us to stay at the cap."

The official public presentation of the budget will be held on Thursday, March 21 at 5:30 p.m. at the Lafayette Learning Center.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated Board Vice President Peter Gallerstein delivered the presentation.