What our school budget is really asking us to balance.

FACT CALCULATION

Livingston funds most of its General Fund locally.

Livingston’s 2026–27 General Fund operating budget is $152,572,332. The NJDOE User-Friendly Budget reports $139,022,317 from local sources, including a $136,638,078 General Fund school tax levy. Local sources therefore support about 91.1% of the operating budget, and the levy alone represents about 89.6%.

Source: NJDOE 2026–27 Livingston User-Friendly Budget, p. 2; final General Fund appropriation also appears in the April 28, 2026 BOE minutes.

FACT

State aid grew substantially earlier in the period, then edged down in the last two observations.

The reviewed NJDOE district-detail files support a continuous Livingston K–12 aid series from FY2021 through FY2027. Because the annual files use different official statuses, the chart preserves those labels instead of presenting the series as seven years of final adopted aid.

FY2027 K–12 aid is $9,483,132, down $49,237 (about 0.52%) from FY2026. That does not mean every measure of state support fell: the broader UFB General Fund state-source total rises from $10,147,630 Revised in 2025–26 to $11,033,132 Proposed in 2026–27, partly because the same UFB reports higher Extraordinary Aid.

Sources: NJDOE annual state-aid district-detail files and the 2026–27 Livingston UFB, p. 2.

FACT CALCULATION

The 6.37% General Fund levy increase is a bridge, not a broken 2% cap.

New Jersey’s levy framework starts with an ordinary 2% increase and permits defined adjustments. Livingston’s published 2026–27 bridge shows the entire amount above the ordinary 2% increase in the health-care-cost adjustment, with no enrollment adjustment and no banked-cap use.

The arithmetic increase is $8,180,236, or 6.37%. NJDOE’s health-adjustment rules apply to qualifying group health and prescription costs; dental, vision, life, and other additional employee benefits are excluded. The statewide benchmark does not establish that every Livingston health-related cost rose by the same percentage.

Sources: Livingston 2026–27 Budget Book, pp. 3 and 6; April 28 final-budget minutes; and NJDOE levy-cap guidance.

FACT CALCULATION ANALYSIS

This cost is growing. Understanding why matters.

Livingston’s budget labels this category “Tuition Paid Other Districts.” In the 2026–27 budget, the $10,087,681 total comes from three formal NJDOE accounts for Livingston-resident students receiving special-education instructional services outside the district. These dollars represent services for students with individual needs, so I think it is important to understand the financial trend without losing sight of the students receiving those services.

The 2% column is a campaign calculation that compounds the FY2022 General Fund levy by 2% per year. It is a comparison benchmark, not the legal maximum levy and not a 2% cap on an individual expenditure account. NJDOE states that the statutory levy framework starts with 2% and then permits specified adjustments.

Sources: Livingston FY2022–FY2025 ACFR Schedule C-1 via the NJDOE ACFR repository; Livingston 2026–27 Budget Book, pp. 3, 6, and 13; NJDOE 2026–27 Uniform Minimum Chart of Accounts, objects 560, 562, 566, and 567; and NJDOE levy-cap guidance. Open the dedicated tuition-growth detail page.

FACT CALCULATION

The current-year pressure is concentrated in several broad categories.

The 2026–27 UFB shows a large proposed increase in Employee Benefits, along with increases in tuition for Livingston students educated outside the district and Student Transportation. These are useful signals, but they are not by themselves causal explanations.

Employee Benefits is broader than health insurance. For Livingston’s 2026–27 budget, the $10.09M UFB “Tuition” amount reconciles to the same three formal out-of-district tuition accounts shown above; the UFB’s short label is therefore an accounting aggregate, not college tuition. Student Transportation remains broader than specialized or out-of-district transportation. The April 28 minutes also state that a better-than-estimated prescription renewal allowed kindergarten aides to be added back before adoption, but the minutes do not quantify the exact savings or final detailed health amount.

Sources: NJDOE UFB, pp. 4–5; Livingston 2026–27 Budget Book, p. 13; and April 28 BOE minutes.

CALCULATION

Five audited years show a more complicated story than “everything else was squeezed.”

The audited FY2021–FY2025 General Fund record lets us separate salary/wages, health, other employee benefits, the same three-account outside-district tuition grouping, and non-salary transportation from the remaining current expense. Every year reconciles to the audited locally budgeted current-expense control total.

Across the full audited window, locally budgeted current expense rose about 21.9%. The calculated residual rose from $9.45M to $12.38M, about 31.0%, and increased in every annual observation. The evidence therefore does not support describing the residual as a steadily shrinking pool through FY2025.

Source: Livingston FY2021–FY2025 ACFR Schedule C-1 reports in the NJDOE ACFR repository; calculation methodology is documented in the project’s audited historical summary.

FACT CALCULATION ANALYSIS

Where Livingston’s property-tax dollar is governed matters, too.

New Jersey’s Division of Taxation explains that county, municipal, and school budgets determine the local property tax. The State does not receive the local property tax collected. The official 2025 Essex County Abstract of Ratables gives a Livingston general tax rate of 2.531 per $100 of assessed value and identifies its school, municipal, and county components.

Sources: NJ Division of Taxation — General Property Tax Information, New Jersey Assessors Handbook §103.01, and 2025 Essex County Abstract of Ratables.

FACT CALCULATION

The General Fund levy and total school taxes are different measures.

The General Fund levy rose 6.37%, while the debt-service levy declined from $5,719,851 to $4,483,900, about 21.61%. Combined, total school taxes to be raised increase from $134,177,693 to $141,121,978, or about 5.18%. The lower debt-service levy therefore partially offsets the General Fund increase when looking at the combined school-tax levy.

Source: Livingston final-budget records and the 2026–27 UFB.

ANALYSIS

What I take away from all of this

I do not think the five-year audited history and the current 2026–27 budget fit into one simple story. Through FY2025, the calculated remaining-current-expense pool did not steadily shrink. At the same time, the current budget shows substantial increases in several broad categories, especially Employee Benefits and tuition for Livingston students educated outside the district. We still need final adopted account-level salary and health detail before making a comparable 2026–27 residual calculation.

My approach is to separate those periods, show where the numbers come from, and distinguish the costs Livingston can influence from obligations, formulas, and market prices that constrain local choices. I am less interested in finding a slogan for every increase than in understanding the tradeoffs early enough to protect educational quality and plan responsibly.