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A six-month progress report released this week by the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) on the Berkeley Unified School District says that the district “continues to make good progress in five operational areas” of education management. 

The largest jump was in the area of financial management, where the district’s FCMAT rating has climbed more than half a point on a 10-point scale between July and January (4.35 to 4.95) and nearly two points since FCMAT’s first rating in July of 2003 (3.08 to 4.95). In its report, FCMAT noted that “fiscal solvency has been restored, formal business processes and procedures and internal controls have been established.” 

As a result of the Alameda County Office of Education’s approval of BUSD’s 2004-05 adopted budget, FCMAT has been removed from the fiscal advisory role to the district it was assigned to by the county in 2003. 

The report mentioned one Berkeley school by name, saying in the facilities management section that “the staff at John Muir Elementary School has maintained the highest level of school safety and attractive facilities.” 

This is the next-to-the-last six-month review in which FCMAT rates BUSD in the categories of community relations/governance, personnel management, pupil achievement, financial management, and facilities management. 

FCMAT is a public management assistance organization formed by state legislative action in 1991 to provide assistance to troubled school districts.  

In 2002, after BUSD was assessed a $1.16 million fine by the state following a dispute over reimbursement for teacher development days, FCMAT was brought in to evaluate the district and develop a five-year improvement plan. In addition, the Alameda County Office of Education brought FCMAT in to the BUSD as fiscal adviser after the county office failed to approve the district’s 2001 budget. 

In 2003 FCMAT reviewed 456 specific areas of operation in the district. Each succeeding six month evaluation concentrated on only a portion of those areas (96 in this month’s report) spread out over the five categories. 

BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence, who said she had not yet had the chance to go through the 170-page evaluation in depth, said she was generally pleased at the results. 

“I did not see any things here that were surprises to me,” she said. “In some instances, they gave a higher rating where I might not have rated it that high. And the converse is true that in an area that they saw one or two points lower I would have perhaps given it one or two points higher. But those ratings are all subjective, and so I don’t quarrel with those positions.” 

The superintendent said that she was “immensely proud of the work that the staff has been doing to meet these objectives. I applaud the work that they have done.” 

Board, parent, and teacher representatives contacted by the Daily Planet had not yet seen a copy of the FCMAT report, which is scheduled to be presented to board directors and the public at next Wednesday’s meeting of the BUSD Board of Education. 

While FCMAT praised BUSD for what it called “significant effort” to remedy issues raised in FCMAT’s initial 2003 evaluation of the district, this week’s report offered specific criticisms in areas FCMAT evaluators felt still needed work. 

In personnel management, FCMAT said that among other things, employee evaluation and an internal operational procedure manual are lacking. In pupil achievement, the report said the district “needs to continue efforts” in developing a policy and model for due process and student discipline and creating an organizational structure for K-12 curriculum development in one division. 

Lawrence said that while the specific criticisms and suggestions in the report are helpful “to show what ought to be accomplished in order to get a school system righted,” the evaluation points themselves lack a frame of reference. 

“Since FCMAT is not evaluating all school districts in the state, there’s not a standard by which we can judge ourselves and take examples,” she said. “If there is a school district that got a perfect 10 in any of the areas, for example, we’d like to go and look at it so we can go and see what they’re doing that we are not. I asked FCMAT, but they told me they haven’t given out any 10s. So in the absence of statewide standards, we can only use the reports as internal documents by which to measure our own progress.”