For the first time in nearly a year, Oakland Unified School District has a full board, with representatives from all seven districts in the city, including a new District 5 director chosen in November’s special election.
From now until June, the board will be scrutinizing the district’s nearly $1 billion budget for areas to trim and reinvest for the upcoming school year. The Alameda County Office of Education will also be closely monitoring the budget to ensure the district can pay its bills.
Leading the board will be Sam Davis. The District 1 director was elected president by his colleagues at a special budget meeting on Monday.
Over the next few years, OUSD will see the expiration of more than $140 million in one-time state and federal aid that went to things like tutors, substitute teachers, counselors, and other roles that were expanded with COVID-relief money. The district also recently signed a new contract with the teachers’ union that is expected to cost $110 million over three years and is currently negotiating raises with other unions. Raising compensation across the board is something district leaders have prioritized to increase staff retention.
Right now, the district’s unrestricted fund is projected to have a nearly $24 million deficit in the 2024-2025 school year, and a $25 million deficit the following year. During Monday’s meeting, Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell stated that those deficits could increase to nearly $50 million once the district finishes negotiations.
OUSD is in a different position today than when Johnson-Trammell took the helm in 2017, where the district was facing immediate insolvency and a state takeover if cuts weren’t made that school year, she said. In her sixth year as superintendent, Johnson-Trammell is OUSD’s longest-serving chief in decades.
“We are not in a crisis. We see what’s coming ahead of us and we have an opportunity to be thoughtful about where we want to make adjustments and really think about where it is we want to prioritize and where we want to structure ourselves as a district in order to carry out our vision and mission,” she said at Monday’s meeting. “If we do not take action, when we get to school year 26-27 we will deplete the fund balance. We cannot continue to not do anything if we want to remain a locally controlled district.”
The board didn’t make any decisions Monday, but directors suggested some areas to consider cuts, including OUSD’s central office, assistant principals, and some teacher positions, while maintaining investments in compensation and facilities.
The board was hesitant to broach school closures, a controversial idea that previous boards have attempted to carry out against significant community blowback. Proponents of closures say the district has too many schools and campuses compared to the number of students it enrolls, leading to higher costs needed to keep those buildings running. Opponents say closures harm school communities, have a disproportionate impact on Black students, disrupt learning, and won’t fix the district’s long-term financial problems.
In 2022, the board voted to close or merge nearly a dozen schools, prompting a building occupation, hunger strikes, and protests across the city. Two schools were closed, La Escuelita shrunk from a K-8 to a K-5 school, and two schools were merged. Last year, after more anti-closure candidates were elected to the board in November 2022, they reversed the decision to close five additional schools in 2023.
But the problems of declining enrollment are not going away, forcing district leaders to grapple with the costs of keeping small schools open.
“I know we don’t want to have this conversation around the number of schools, but we need to figure out how we do it in a way to address the ways we’ve done it in the past that didn’t work. Because we’re talking about trying to address a $50 million gap. Because we have to pay people’s salaries,” Johnson-Trammell said. “We’re not going to get that just from cutting at central office. I really need us to get serious about the math and some of the hard decisions before us.”
Last year, the board approved a budget resolution that included the possibility of consolidating up to 10 schools, each of which currently shares a campus with at least one other school. This was projected to save about $2.5 million.
OUSD’s new board president, Davis, voted against rescinding school closures last year, and said he feels that the district’s resources could go further with fewer schools.
“As long as we continue to be spread out through 77 different schools in Oakland … every time you visit a school, you’re going to hear ‘We don’t get enough pay, we don’t have enough resources to do our jobs’ because we’re spread too thin across the district,” he said at Wednesday’s regular school board meeting.
The board will have another budget session on Jan. 31, and is expected to begin voting on adjustments in February.
OUSD leadership shuffle
Davis, who was elected with the support of six board members (District 6 Director Valarie Bachelor voted against him), said his biggest priority for the year is for the district to leave state receivership. That would mean the board would be free to make financial decisions without the oversight of county trustee Luz Cazares, who maintains veto power over budget decisions until the district pays off its state loans and passes a financial audit. Davis also wants to see the board build a better rapport among its members.
“One of the main steps that we can take as a board to achieve that goal is to have a higher standard of how we approach this role,” Davis said in brief remarks Monday. “It also means a higher standard for how we work together, how we show respect to each other, to the superintendent, and to her staff.”
Davis wants to hold monthly study sessions for the board on topics like the budget, charter schools, and facilities. He asked each board committee, which includes budget and finance, facilities, charter schools, and teaching and learning, to create a work plan for 2024 that outlines its goals for the year.
District 4 Director Mike Hutchinson, who served as board president last year, was elected vice president of the board.
Along with electing new leadership, the board also voted to give itself a $40 raise to the $826 monthly stipend that directors receive—the board’s first since 2018. The district also covers 100% of board members’ health insurance costs.
Directors Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams, and Valarie Bachelor opposed the raise because the board is also proposing major budget adjustments that could include cuts to school sites and possible school mergers.
“Opting to forego a pay raise will demonstrate that we as school board members are willing to personally sacrifice for the greater good of our schools,” Bachelor said. “By approving a pay raise, this may be perceived as a misalignment of priorities.”
Other members pointed out that such a small stipend limits who can run for the school board to those who are independently wealthy, or those with full-time jobs but who won’t have as much time to dedicate to school board matters like visiting campuses, attending meetings, and talking with constituents. Hutchinson suggested working with the California School Boards Association to see if compensation limits, imposed by state law, can be raised.
“I think this is a very important step and the message that it sends is to the community that we’re looking to change things so more of them have the ability to serve in this role,” Hutchinson said.
Improving attendance could help the district budget
This year, OUSD has seen improvements in attendance, which could mean more revenues. The absence rate is currently around 8%, which is almost 2% less than this time last year. The chronic absence rate, which measures students who have missed more than 10% of school, has also improved by a few percentage points over this time last year, which equates to nearly $1.2 million more in revenues, according to a report presented by the superintendent at a regular meeting of the board on Wednesday.
Safety concerns also remain top of mind for district leaders. In 2020, the school board unanimously disbanded the district police department—which at the time was the last remaining school police department in Alameda County—and replaced school security guards with “culture and climate keepers,” who are charged with intervening in disputes between students before they turn violent.
Some recent high-profile safety incidents include a shooting last year at Skyline, and bomb threats at Chabot Elementary and across the district,. In 2022, a shooting at Rudsdale High School killed an OUSD employee and injured five others, a student was stabbed at Skyline, and a middle school student was shot at Madison Park Academy.
The culture keepers have received mixed reviews from students. Student board directors Vida Mendoza and Anevay Cruz on Wednesday presented feedback from visits with several high schools to hear student concerns about safety.
At Oakland High School, students reported that the culture keepers were often aggressive towards students, yelling and displaying rude behavior, said student director Cruz. At Castlemont High School, students said the culture keepers made them feel safe and supported in going to class.
“We would love to work with our district team to figure out what they are doing at Castlemont and how they can shape how other culture keepers are at all of our schools because that is not a common experience we have heard,” said student director Mendoza.
