Small part? What else is there?

Dave Kirwin

FCMAT Predictors of School Districts Needing Intervention
The following 11 conditions represent those school agency problems most commonly encountered by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT). The presence of any one condition is not necessarily an indication of a school agency in trouble. Unavoidable short-term situations such as key administrative vacancies can result in brief and acceptable periods of exposure to one or more of the following conditions. Exceeding acceptable limits of exposure in one or more of the following conditions is often the blueprint for districts nearing or presently in a crisis situation.
1. Leadership Breakdown
o Governance crisis
o Ineffective staff recruitment
o Board micromanagement and special interest groups influencing boards
o Ineffective or no supervision
o Litigation against district
2. Ineffective Communication
o Staff unrest and morale issues
o Absence of communication to educational community
o Lack of interagency cooperation
o Breakdown of internal systems (payroll, position control)
3. Collapse of Infrastructure
o Unhealthful and unsafe facilities and sites
o Deferred maintenance neglected
o Low Budget Priority
o Local and state citations ignored
o No long-range plan for facility maintenance
4. Inadequate Budget Development
o Failure to recognize year-to-year trends
o Flawed ADA projections
o Failure to maintain reserves
o Salary and benefits in unrealistic proportions
o Insufficient consideration of long-term bargaining agreement effects
o Flawed multi-year projections
o Inaccurate revenue and expenditure estimations
5. Limited Budget Monitoring
o Failure to reconcile ledgers
o Poor cash flow analysis and reconciliation
o Inadequate business systems and controls
o Inattention to Countu of Education data
o Failure to review management control reports
o Bargaining agreements beyond state COLA
o Lawsuit settlements
6. Poor Position Control
o Identification of each position missing
o Unauthorized hiring
o Budget development process affected
o No integration of position control with payroll
7. Ineffective Management Information Systems
o Limited access to timely personnel, payroll, and budget control data and reports
o Inadequate attention to system life cycles
o Inadequate communication systems
8. Inattention to Categorical Programs
o Escalating general fund encroachment
o Lack of regular monitoring
o Illegal expenditures
o Failure to file claims
9. Substantial Long-Term Debt Commitments
o Increased costs of employee health benefits
o Certificates of participation
o Retiree health benefits for employees and spouse
o Expiring parcel taxes dedicated to ongoing costs
10. Human Resource Crisis
o Shortage of staff (administrators, teachers, support, and board)
o Teachers and support staff working out of assignment
o Students/classrooms without teachers
o Administrators coping with daily crisis intervention
o Inadequate staff development
11. Related Issues of Concern
o Local and state audit exceptions
o Disproportionate number of under performing schools
o Staff, parent, and student exodus from the school district
o Public support for public schools decreasing
o Inadequate community participation and communication

AUSD is in no danger of such action by the State.

The 2nd link is also interesting - I took the time to also go to its source, the Alameda Grand Jury of ‘03-04. This link goes over the warning signs of school district budget problems, as inspected by County Board of Edu (under the educational committee)
The reasons the Grand Jury enacted this committee was that 1.) County Dist. of Edu. was slacking in its job of fiscal oversight of its school districts for many years, and 2.) this was the last time the Gov raided Prop #98 funds (They were ‘borrowed’ not eliminated.)
I would have liked to read the responses required of ACBOE

It is not without pride that I noticed AUSD was not one of the 6 districts in the county who were having severe budget problems. AUSD has been diligent with its financial responsibility, (even when it meant every teacher received a pink slip).

This time- in the coming fiscal years I expect AUSD administrators will do the best that they can, yet I hope our BOE will at least take the stand that the suspension of Prop 98, -if it comes to that - represents a violation of trust so severe that it represents a fiscal emergency for which we are entitled to rely on our reserves until, the local citizens are called upon again to locally support our schools.

(Perhaps this is the only way to go back to local fiscal control of our schools as dave was questioning in #9)

2004-2005 Alameda County Civil Grand Jury Final Report
________________________________________________________________________
33
CONCLUSION
The Alameda County Superintendent of Schools has not been effective in
preventing school district financial problems from developing into crises. There
have been a disproportionate number of fiscal crises in Alameda County in the
past half-dozen years. The superintendent has taken a minimalist approach to
the job of prevention.
The new law, AB 2756 of 2004, reemphasizes the primacy of prevention
and adds substantially to the county superintendent’s powers of prevention.
The law intends that the county superintendent be a full partner with the local
school districts in the maintenance of financial solvency.
The county superintendent has allocated too few staff to the task of
analyzing school district budgets and interim reports and particularly to
investigating evidence of financial distress.
The county superintendent has not publicly embraced the responsibility
under the law for preventing school district financial crises. Nor has the
superintendent shown leadership as the only county-wide elected education
official by becoming a public champion of the tough but necessary choices that
must be made by school districts to maintain balanced budgets.

2004-2005 Alameda County Civil Grand Jury Final Report
________________________________________________________________________
34
– EXHIBIT A –
FCMAT PREDICTORS
OF SCHOOL AGENCIES NEEDING INTERVENTION
The following list represents the 15 conditions that have been found most
frequently to indicate fiscal distress and are those referenced in Assembly Bill
2756 (Daucher) and in the recently amended Education Code sections 42127
and 42127.6.
1. Governance crisis.
2. Absence of communication to educational community.
3. Lack of interagency cooperation.
4. Failure to recognize year-to-year trends.
5. Flawed Average Daily Attendance (ADA) projections.
6. Failure to maintain reserves.
7. Insufficient consideration of long-term bargaining agreement effects.
8. Flawed multi-year projections.
9. Inaccurate revenue and expenditure estimations.
10. Poor cash flow analysis and reconciliation.
11. Bargaining agreements beyond state COLA.
12. No integration of position control with payroll.
13. Limited access to timely personnel, payroll, and budget control date
and reports.
14. Escalating general fund encroachment.
15. Lack of regular monitoring.

From your post #19, I wanted to bring to the attention to others, (who may be short on research time), that our AUSD Superintendent is the lowest paid school superintendent in the county relative to the number of students per District.

More important is to point out that AUSD spends much less of its budget on Administration than other districts, and from what I know working for another district and having many friends in education, (I hear the opinions of employees in 8 of the school districts in Alameda county), AUSD is an organization for which we can all be very proud. Most readers probably know that is an understatement.

Perhaps one reason that AUSD staff,- administration, teachers, and classified staff (service) are willing to work in Alameda for less money, is the fact that our PTA’s are motivated, our parents care and participate, and this family effort for education makes our kids more respectful and easier to teach. The fact that our classrooms are ‘family-assisted’ to such a level, might make the teaching experience more satisfying or gratifying than other districts. I fear that this will dissipate along with the “small-town quality” as Alameda struggles with problems pursuant to “big-city-growth.”

Alameda County Enrollment Salary Salary % Spent
1998-99 2003-04 Admin Salaries
Alameda 10,621 128,482 153,000 4.6
Albany 3,314 102,310 133,000 6.6
Berkeley 8,843 135,664 185,000 6.3
Castro Valley 8,391 125,538 167,293 5.7
Dublin 4,483 90,426 135,667 na
Fremont 31,844 124,498 185,792 5.6
Hayward 24,014 129,120 183,150 5
Livermore 14,329 123,875 168,000 6.6
Newark 7,421 104,000 155,000 8
Oakland 50,437 139,242 236,640 6.2
Piedmont 2,597 105,560 145,000 6
Pleasanton 14,039 157,730 196,000 5.4
San Leandro 8,653 119,583 148,253 na
San Lorenzo 11,554 115,000 175,000 5.7
Sources: California Department of Education, California Teachers Association

I’m not making an alarmist argument regarding socialism, though I guess I can see how you might have thought that. If everyone who is paying the parcel tax currently were to vote in favor of extending it to those Alamedans who are not paying it currently there might be enough votes to pass that type of amendment. Also, I, for one, would be willing to have my own share of the tax increased if as part of the amendment the parcel tax were applied to everyone. I’m just saying that as part of the discussion about a parcel tax amendment that type of approach should be considered, because I doubt very much that simply proposing to increase the existing tax on the same people who pay it now would garner enough support. Also, you would have to increase the tax considerably to make up the shortfall if it were only to apply to the same people who pay it now. Applying it to a larger population would help solve the shortage.

As for what the superintendent is paid, that may be something people should look at, but not in the context of this discussion; it’s either an issue or it isn’t; it should not come up only when there is a budget crisis. If people care about what their public officials are being paid then they should always care and not just use that as a situational argument.

Mike Rich, I understood your meaning with redistribution of wealth, but one usually hears it in a context of Marxism or socialism, which whether you think they are good ideas or not, they might be executed more equitably than the parcel tax. People who like to alarm us about socialism on the horizon might use redistribution of wealth as a buzz word.

It’s all about the politics of campaigns. If you write a fair law which taxes by the “door” or unit and not by parcel, you not only invite organized opposition from landlords, it’s also gets too complicated to explain easily. When phone banking you have to be able to tell people a definitive amount and not do calculations. If the tax was by assessed value it might be fairer in theory but with prop 13 new home owners who are carrying the rest of us on the property tax roles would again get tagged at a higher rate.

The implication I take from Phil S. asking about Ardella’s salary is that he is gunning for the alleged fat in the administration. No indication about his view of either the hospital tax or the CEO salary there.

Whether people think such positions are over compensated or not the market for superintendents is set and you can’t balance the budget or rectify school funding problems in the state by decimating the administration.