MONROE — Michael C. Gorski won’t have to do much prep work in his new job as school business administrator.

Gorski, 41, worked alongside longtime Business Administrator/Board Secretary Wayne Holliday for more than 10 years as assistant business administrator. When Holliday retired on June 30, Gorski took over.

“I’m not green by any means,” he joked in an interview Tuesday. “I worked closely with Wayne for a long time. He was going to give us a long period of notice, and it turned out to be just 60 days. I was anticipating he was going to go at some point, but it came sooner than I had hoped.”

Hollilday, 57, retired after serving 25 years with the Monroe school district.

“He had a long and distinguished career here,” Gorski said. “He put forth 110 percent effort. He just personally felt it was time to retire and enjoy the fruits of retirement.”

The Board of Education voted unanimously to hire Gorski at a June 16 meeting at a salary of $160,000. Holliday was making $187,338 before he retired.

“So far, everything has been going smoothly,” Gorski said. “We have an excellent support staff and a wonderful superintendent. It’s been a pleasure working with him.”

Gorski is a certified public accountant and has a master’s degree in educational administration from Rider University, where he taught graduate school finance and school accounting as an adjunct professor up until a few years ago.He lives in Lawrencevillewith hiswife and three children.

The district, with its nearly 1,000 employees, a $100 million budget and seven schools, including a new high school slated to open in 2011, is a “very dynamic and challenging environment,” Gorski said.

“Wayne’s done a great job,” he said. “I’m very excited about continuing the excellent tradition here in the business administrator’s office.”

But he knows the coming year won’t be easy, especially since there’s a projected $10.5 billion shortfall in the state’s 2011 budget.

“I believe that’s probably a [red flag] of more difficult times to come,” Gorski said. “But I’m confident [Superintendent of Schools] Dr. [Kenneth] Hamilton and I, the staff and the Board of Education will come up with some ways of doing more with less.”

Monroe school officials this spring struggledwith a nearly 95 percent cut in state aid, a decrease Holliday had termed “incomprehensible.” Monroe took the second biggest hit in state aid for Middlesex County school districts, losing more than $4.4 million.

Voters here defeated the $80.6 million school tax levy on April 20. The Township Council later pared $1.5 million from the tax levy. In the end, 22 employees lost their jobs, including media coordinators, world language teachers, two vice principals, paraprofessionals, technology support and several teachers.

The new high school is roughly 80 percent completed, with some interior work that still needs to be done, Gorski said Tuesday.

“The opening is set for September 2011,” he said. “We expect it to be fully enclosed by the end of the summer.”