A revised operating budget for the current school year that projects a deficit of nearly $3.98 million — roughly $42,800 more than originally anticipated — is scheduled to be considered next week by the Lindbergh Board of Education.

The Board of Education will meet at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 14, in the boardroom of the Administration Building, 4900 S. Lindbergh Blvd.

As proposed, the revised operating budget for the 2010-2011 school year projects revenues of $53,246,113 with anticipated expenditures of $57,225,063 — a deficit of $3,978,950. The district will not go into the red, but will dip into its reserves, which total $20,514,746, according to Chief Financial Officer Pat Lanane. He projected an operational balance of $16,535,796 on June 30.

The original operating budget, adopted in June, projected revenues of $53,892,275 with anticipated expenditures of $57,828,411 — a deficit of $3,936,136.

The nearly $4 million deficit was reached after the board voted to give final approval to more than $4.7 million in reductions.

The board’s action eliminated 60 positions, including 45 teaching positions.

In June 2009, the school board adopted a 2009-2010 operating budget that projected a deficit of $3 million. That $3 million deficit was reached by making more than $2 million in reductions. But a further decline in the assessed value of commercial real estate — including successful appeals by commercial property owners to the county Board of Equalization — coupled with cuts in state funding left Lindbergh with a projected budget deficit for the 2009-2010 school year of roughly $6 million, though that amount later decreased to about $4.8 million.

Lanane outlined the proposed revised budget numbers for the current school year and discussed preliminary budget numbers for the 2011-2012 school year Saturday morning during a Board of Education work session.

District voters last month approved Proposition L, a 65-cent tax-rate increase proposal. The measure received 11,872 “yes” votes — 53.7 percent — and 10,239 “no” votes — 46.3 percent.

“… This could have been the worst meeting in the history of the Lindbergh School District had Prop L not passed … I know you all are kind of there,” Lanane said to the board, “but I don’t know that all the staff yet, all the parents, all the community really realizes what we avoided and what Prop L did for us that we now don’t have to worry about. We don’t have to worry about talking about 80 — I don’t know, somewhere in that number — staff members not coming back. Class sizes going through the roof. Transportation — disrupting the lives of thousands of families in this school district with no transportation to school.

“So that’s monumental when you think about — and I know there’s going to be people who say: Well, we didn’t seem to get much for this. Oh no, we got a huge piece in this …,” he added.

The district will not begin to collect revenue generated by Prop L until late 2011 and early 2012. At one point during Saturday’s discussion, board Treasurer Mark Rudoff cited the estimated $16.5 million in reserves at the end of the current school year and asked Lanane if the district would be able to maintain its policy of not borrowing money to meet operating expenditures.

“I’m telling you, it’s razor close …,” Lanane responded, saying borrowing might be avoided with “some manipulation of some other dollars that we have out there and being able to use them temporarily until we get that (revenue in) January (2012) …

“It is razor close and I cannot sit here and say you absolutely (won’t have to borrow). If it is, it would be very minor. I don’t think so right now, but that’s how close we were getting,” he continued. “We weren’t kidding and you all weren’t kidding when you told the public: We’re there, folks. We need to do this now because borrowing’s not that far away …

“And the thing would be if the money had come to us this year, yeah, no problem. But it doesn’t come this year. It’s another year away before we see really any money and we get a little bit in December so it’s exactly one year away.”

Rudoff emphasized he wants to ensure the district does not have to borrow money for operational expenses.

“… I would like for you to say: Look, these are some of the options that we’re looking at to help us through because until we’re sure that the money’s coming in, we’re going to be operating very close to an environment where we may have to borrow and that’s always been part of our trademark is we’re a no-borrow district here that we don’t want to be spending any interest on funds to get our operational expenses through,” Rudoff said.

Regarding the preliminary 2011-2012 operating budget, Lanane estimated revenues at $60,295,254 with anticipated expenditures totaling about $57,882,663 — a surplus of $2,412,591. But he noted expenditures that remain to be determined for the 2011-2012 school year include em-ployee salary and insurance increases.

Another expense yet to be determined will be additional costs from redrawing elementary-school boundaries and creating new middle-school boundaries to relieve overcrowding at Sperreng Middle School.

Lanane also urged the board to consider using some of the projected 2011-2012 surplus to begin rebuilding the district’s reserves, which had totaled $24.6 million at the end of the 2008-2009 school year.

“… As a finance guy, I’m always looking at the reserves, to at least start the process of rebuilding the reserves,” he said. “The note I have on here is ‘lesson learned.’ That is what really kept our program intact. Even though we had some serious reductions, the kernel, the quality of our program was kept intact because we had these reserves. It would have been devastating without them.

“So I just would say over this next decade, hopefully the pendulum will start to swing and we’ll have a good decade. Maybe the first two or three years of it will be shaky, but maybe this next decade will prove to be a very positive decade for Lindbergh and we need to start to look at getting back some level of reserves that should the next rainy day come, we’re ready.”

Board members and Lanane also emphasized that the Prop L revenue will not provide the school district with a huge financial windfall. Existing programs will be maintained, but the majority of positions and programs that have been eliminated will not be restored.

Lanane said, “… One of the reasons to talk about this today rather than — typically we would have waited awhile to even get into this, but we wanted to get that out there right away to people to be as upfront and transparent as we can.”

Board Vice President Vic Lenz said, “And to make sure the community understands that we’re being very, very careful with the money that we have and we expect to make it last as long as we possibly can.”

Board President Ken Fey said, “We do not want to come back two years from now and ask for more money. That’s not in the cards.”