Michael Fine is the new CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, perhaps the most important education agency Californians may never have heard of — unless their school district has been in financial peril. Better known by its acronym, FCMAT monitors the financial health of school districts, investigates and, together with county offices of education, manages districts when they’re in trouble. It also trains local administrators to keep them from getting into trouble in the first place. Fine, FCMAT’s former chief administrative officer, succeeded longtime CEO Joel Montero on his retirement this summer. He previously was the deputy superintendent for business services of the Riverside Unified School District. Fine recently shared his thoughts with EdSource’s John Fensterwald on the potential challenges districts may be facing with declining revenues, rising expenses and full funding of the Local Control Funding Formula. This is a shortened version of their conversation.
EDSOURCE: These are relatively good times yet we hear that districts are cutting back programs, laying off teachers and other district personnel. Why is that happening after several years with good revenues for districts?
MIKE FINE: We are at the tail end of a fairly dramatic expansion period. We’re in transition to a slowing of year-over-year revenue growth while at the same time costs are not necessarily slowing.
To continue reading this Q-and-A by John Fensterwald, go to: https://edsource.org/2017/watc...evenues-fcmat/585585
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