Fiscal Tools
The Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) developed the County Office Evaluation Tool (COET) because of Assembly Bill (AB) 1840, which made a significant change in how financially insolvent school districts are administered after they receive a state emergency appropriation. As part of that legislation, Education Code Section 41326(l)was amended to give FCMAT the responsibility of reviewing the fiscal oversight performed by the county superintendent of schools for any district receiving an emergency apportionment.
Part of FCMAT’s responsibility is to evaluate the effectiveness of a county superintendent of schools’ oversight and its involvement with school districts that receive emergency appropriations, and to assess its progress until the emergency appropriations are paid off. The first tab, the Initial Evaluation, is the portion of the COET used by FCMAT when a district initially goes insolvent, and it can be used by any county superintendent to strengthen internal processes related to oversight performance. The second tab, the Initial Eval Doc Req, lists the documents that FCMAT requests when evaluating a county superintendent of school’s fiscal oversight and involvement with the district. In the years following an Initial Evaluation, FCMAT uses the other tabs of the tool to assess both a county superintendent of schools’ fiscal oversight and its progress until the emergency appropriation is paid off.
Because the Initial Evaluation identifies the key tasks and elements county superintendents of schools perform and consider when reviewing annual budgets, interim reports, and unaudited actuals, it can provide an accurate assessment of any county superintendent’s performance. Responses to each of the elements are limited to a “yes” or “no.” The county superintendent’s oversight performance is assessed using a risk protocol based on the number of “no” responses related to the assessment of each element.
County superintendents of schools should complete the Initial Evaluation annually and compare the progress over time.
Completed evaluations and other reports are available on the FCMAT reports page.