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President/Superintendent's Blog


We have the FCMAT Study Results


Published on 3/19/2017.

I want to share the full Fiscal Crises and Management Assistant Team's report with all of my colleagues in the District. When you read the full report, you’ll see that FCMAT accomplished what we asked them to do. I want to thank Jim Austin, our FCMAT consultant, for his work.  He did a great job analyzing the District and developing concrete recommendations for improvement.  Here's a brief summary of some of the findings.

FCMAT found that enrollment decreases are contributing to our fiscal problem and although we’ve implemented several initiatives to increase FTES we don’t have a compre­hensive plan to address the decline in FTES.  They wrote that our fund balance is unstable because of ongoing revenues and/or expenditure reductions and we will not able to maintain our reserves for economic uncertainty based on current revenue and expenditure trends.  They found that although FTES and enrollment projections appear reasonable based on the assumptions used; the relationship between budgeted and actual revenue, expenses and ending balance numbers is not easily assessed or transparent.   FCMAT suggested that we focus our financial resources on supporting our highest priority programs and offer programs that meet the needs of the community.

FCMAT recommended that we take several actions: 

  • Pursue every possible option to regain FTES before the funding is permanently lost.
  • Create a task force to identify and create cost-effective strategies to regain enrollment.
  • Consider focusing the newly contracted advocacy representative on increasing funding for small rural districts.
  • Work with community and Native American advocates to seek enhanced educational funding for the reservations.
  • Investigate innovative K-12/community college initiatives in California and the rest of the country.
  • More vigorously and uniformly implement AP 4020, Program and Curriculum Development.
  • Fully implement AP 4021, Program Revitalization and Discontinuation Process.
  • Investigate the feasibility of a voter-approved parcel tax.
  • Commission a business processes/workflow study to help ensure that processes and procedures are as efficient as possible.
  • Offer training programs for business division staff.
  • Offer an in-house business processes training program for all staff who generate purchasing and budgeting documents.
  • Initiate ongoing communication and presentation skill and technique training for the Administrative Services Division leadership.
  • Consider a mentoring resource for the business division leadership.
  • Consider developing a new board policy to specifically document the desired level of unrestricted reserves.

1.    FCMAT's findings and recommendations provide clear actions that, if accomplished, will improve our fiscal condition and increase our operational efficiencies.  I will work with the Cabinet, Academic Senate, and the constituent group leadership to address the recommendations.  The report has been posted on the President’s website.  I encourage you to read it. 

Remember that our shared history should tell us that we can solve any problem and address any challenge as long as we do it together.
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