Four in ten Oakland Unified School District schools are less than 50% occupied. More than 80% have no cooling system. And the vast majority of buildings are more than 50 years old. Oakland’s public schools need billions of dollars of upgrades and renovations, according to a new district report.
On the list are everything from structural deficiencies and accessibility needs to heating and ventilation upgrades. As the school board plans future investments and charts a path to a more sustainable district footprint, the 2026 Facilities Master Plan lays out recommendations.
The primary problems the report addresses are building age, the lack of cooling systems, too-old classroom portables, and declining enrollment, resulting in a high number of small, underenrolled schools.
As it is currently structured, OUSD can serve up to 56,000 students but only about 34,000 are enrolled. Additionally, families participate unevenly in OUSD’s school choice system across the district.
For example, the majority of students in districts 1, 2, and 4 attend their neighborhood schools, while in the other four districts, most students leave their neighborhoods to attend school.
“OUSD’s enrollment patterns reflect both student need and family choice and vary across Oakland, so facilities planning must go beyond utilization and attendance boundaries to account for equity, housing patterns, choice-driven enrollment flows, program location, facility quality, and capacity at local and regional scales,” the report said.
While the report includes recommendations, it’s up to school board directors to decide which schools get attention first. Modern facilities can attract more families to OUSD and positively impact teacher and staff retention.
A bond measure could potentially go to voters in 2028, which, if passed, would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure projects.
“Facilities shape the daily experience of learning,” interim superintendent Denise Saddler said during last month’s school board meeting. “They influence how students feel when they arrive at school, and how teachers deliver instruction, and how communities connect with their neighborhood campuses.”
38 campuses rated “deficient”
Facility issues have plagued OUSD in recent years. A lead contamination crisis revealed elevated lead levels in district water sources at dozens of schools in 2024. McClymonds High School has been the site of toxic ground chemicals. Parents have been organizing to call attention to cooling needs in classrooms, especially when heat waves roll through the Bay Area. Schools that shuttered with no plans to repurpose them have been left to languish.
The new report, prepared by the construction firm Perkins Eastman, analyzes every school campus and building, rating the overall condition of the facility by taking into account needs across categories such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC, roofing, and accessibility. It’s the first master plan since 2020, and each report usually precedes planning for a bond.
OUSD rolled out an online dashboard alongside this year’s report, where the public can view campus needs at a glance. Thirty-eight of OUSD’s campuses are rated “deficient,” the lowest possible rating, including Castlemont High, Edna Brewer Middle, Lincoln Elementary, Claremont Middle, and Skyline High.
It estimates how much it would cost to fix them today, and how much fixes would cost by 2040 if the district does nothing now. Skyline High School, for example, needs $198 in upgrades right now, but if nothing is addressed until 2040, those costs increase to nearly $460 million.
A new dashboard shows the condition of public schools across Oakland. Credit: OUSD website screenshot
The public can view a school by school breakdown of repairs needed at every campus. Credit: OUSD website screenshot
In community surveys, parents, teachers, staff, and students ranked infrastructure reliability, outdoor amenities, and modern classrooms as their top concerns. The school board got its first look at the facilities master plan last month.
“This is not a list of specific projects or schools or school decisions,” said Valarie Bachelor, District 6 director and chair of the school board’s facilities committee. “Instead, it establishes the data, criteria, and strategic approach that will help the district make more transparent and informed choices over time.”
Unlike previous master plan documents, this one also takes into account planned housing in Oakland, said Preston Thomas, OUSD’s chief systems and services officer.
“We are tracking the developments, particularly for affordable housing, because we know that those families will join Oakland Unified School District as a primary provider for educational services,” Thomas said during last month’s school board meeting.
The most recent facilities bond, Measure Y, was approved by voters in 2020 to raise $735 million for campus upgrades. McClymonds High School, Roosevelt Middle School, Garfield Elementary School, Coliseum College Prep Academy and Melrose Leadership Academy are receiving major overhauls from Measure Y.
The school board will give feedback on the master plan, which the facilities staff will incorporate before presenting it again to the facilities committee and then the full board for approval later this month.
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