At Wednesday’s meeting, the Oakland Unified School District board discussed disappointing data on academic achievement, mixed news on the district’s finances and slow progress on racial equity in suspensions. They also heard student critiques of the district’s new cell phone ban.

Andrew Bloch, one of two new student directors, presented the results of a survey he and the other student director, Amina Tongun, sent out to high school students last week about the district’s new cell phone policy, which requires all students to keep their phones turned off and put away throughout the school day. At OUSD high schools, this means locking their phones in a Yondr-brand pouch that can only be unlocked by staff with special magnets at the end of the day. 

Within a week, the survey had 419 responses, with about a two-thirds of the responses coming from students at Oakland Technical High School, Oakland High School and Skyline High School. Around 43% of students who responded said they always put their phones in the Yondr pouches, 27% said they sometimes put their phones in the pouches and 28% said they did not.

“My personal estimate is that the students who would take the time to fill out the survey are more likely to follow this policy,” Bloch said. 

Nearly 60% of respondents from Oakland Tech said there were not enough Yondr magnets at their sites, which can result in long lines to get access to their phones after school, as did 80% of students who responded from McClymonds High School, 50% of students from Castlemont High School, 46% from Oakland High and 37% from Skyline. 

Students acknowledged that the new policy has improved school culture, Block said, but they identified some unintended consequences. In preparation for emergencies, students said, it would be helpful for every staff member to have a magnet to unlock the pouches to allow students to contact their parents. And they noted that students who go off campus for lunch aren’t able to use their phones to pay.

Some said the long waits to get phones unlocked after school can cause students to miss the bus. Bloch noted that Skyline has shifted its afternoon bus schedules to accommodate the delays, and he’s advocated for other school sites to do the same. 

“Additionally, locking personal devices can make students unable to complete dual enrollment assignments due to them needing their personal emails,” Bloch said, referring to the classes high schoolers can take with community college professors. “It makes it harder to remind people that they have a club during lunch or after school, and it makes it more difficult for leadership students or journalism students to complete their work.”

Higher attendance, lower suspensions — and stagnant achievement

The board received an update from Superintendent Denise Saddler and Chief Academic Officer Sondra Aguilera on the district’s progress toward meeting goals in three key areas: academics, suspensions and chronic absenteeism. 

OUSD’s 2025-2026 attendance rate was 91%, about half a percentage point higher than in 2024-2025 — and six points higher than in 2022-2023, when the attendance rate was 85%. Chronic absenteeism — students who miss more than 10% of the school year — fell to 27.7% from 29% in the 2024-2025 school year and 61% in 2022-2023.

This year, every school has a goal to increase attendance by 1% and reduce chronic absenteeism by 3%. 

“It’s a huge marker because we did have a lot of high rates of absenteeism and chronic absenteeism even in the years after COVID,” Aguilera said. “If schools are reaching those goals, that does have a huge impact not only on the academic program but of course our financial status.” 

OUSD receives the majority of its state funding through a formula based on average daily attendance numbers. With higher attendance rates, the district receives more money.

OUSD’s disciplinary goal, Aguilera said, is to reduce suspensions by 1% each year for all students, by 3% for Black students and by 1.5% for students with disabilities. In 2012, OUSD was the subject of an investigation by the federal Office of Civil Rights because its schools had disproportionately disciplined Black students, particularly Black boys. At the time, Black students made up 32% of the district’s student enrollment but experienced 63% of the district’s suspensions and 61% of expulsions.

During the 2025-2026 school year, while 3.1% of students were suspended overall, Black students and disabled students were hit harder: 8.2% of Black students were suspended, and 5.6% of students with disabilities. 

The district’s standardized test scores, Aguilera reported, fell far below state proficiency levels during the last school year. Reading scores, measured as distance from grade standards, were about 50 points below standards and math scores were 68 points below standards. The district’s goal for this year, she said, is to increase proficiency by 15 points in reading and 20 points in math. Last year’s scores inched up by 1.3 points in reading and 4.6 points in math compared with the 2024-2025 school year. Scores can range from 300 below standard to 300 above, with a “0” being on grade level.

OUSD’s high school graduation rate in May was 76%, up from 74% the previous year, but down from 79.5% in 2024. Aguilera added that the year-over-year improvement has an asterisk. 

“What you might also be seeing is the absence of our newcomer students,” Aguilera told the board. 

Under the Trump Administration’s stricter immigration enforcement policies, OUSD last year served its lowest number of newcomer students — English learners who have been in the U.S. for fewer than three years — in a decade. 

“When you disaggregated our data previously, you would see that the students we struggled the most to graduate and graduate on time have been our newcomer students,” she said. “So I want for us to be optimistic that this is headed in the right direction, but we need to be sure that it’s for the right reasons and not just because we’re serving less newcomer students.”

‘$91 million of deficit spending’

The board approved the “closing of the books,” receiving a report on unaudited actual spending during the 2025-2026 school year. When the board approves a budget before the start of each school year, the numbers are projections. Each fall, the district’s finance staff report the unaudited actual numbers from the previous year, which may be higher or lower than what was projected. 

Those unaudited actuals must be submitted to the Alameda County Office of Education by Sept. 15 and then sent to external auditors. The ending balances from last year’s report become the starting place for developing the 2026-2027 budget. Last spring, the district’s fiscal team, including Deputy Superintendent for Budget and Operations Tara Gard and fiscal contractor Ruben Frutos, worked to implement a financial stabilization plan that included a strategy to spend down the most restricted resources first, before tapping into unrestricted funds, in order to protect the district’s fund balance.

Troy Christmas, OUSD’s senior director of strategic projects, said Wednesday those moves led to more of a cushion than predicted.

“Overall it sets up 26-27 slightly better than expected, with an ending fund balance that is $16 million above what we projected,” he said. 

Yet, the district still spent down its reserves by about $90 million, going from around $261 million at the beginning of 2025-2026 to $170 million at the close of the fiscal year. 

“We still have structural challenges and difficult decisions ahead,” said Board President Jennifer Brouhard. “We have to be disciplined about expenditures and continue moving toward a sustainable, student-centered budget.”

In June, the board approved the 2026-2027 budget with the expectation that it would slash another $30 million this fall. At the next meeting on Sept. 23, district staff plan to present those proposed cuts to the board. They would likely come from a combination of strategies that could include reducing operations at the central office, lowering contributions to special education spending from the general fund, or reducing outside contracts. 

Christmas warned that shifting expenses around is not sustainable forever. 

“You have $91 million of deficit spending — a significant portion of that was shifts to restricted,” he said. “That strategy is not an indefinite strategy. We have to change so that our spending more closely matches our revenue, and that is work we need to do in the relatively near future.”

A career hub advances

The board also signaled its intent to move forward with a plan to create a career and technical education hub at the district’s former headquarters at 1025 Second Ave., near Laney College. The building has been vacant since it flooded in 2013, and it has since been red-tagged by the Oakland Fire Department, declaring it unsafe. It’s also been the site of vandalism and fires. 

District staff can now proceed to establish a so-called 7-11 committee — a group of seven to 11 residents who will evaluate and make recommendations to the board on its vacant properties, including the former headquarters. 

The intent is for the site to serve as a resource hub for young people ages 18 to 24 who need support transitioning to adulthood. They could be aging out of foster care or juvenile detention, or may be homeless or newcomers to the United States. The hub would offer transitional housing, career training and wraparound services like counseling, life coaching and legal services. 

OUSD would serve as the landlord, but would contract with other agencies to provide services and programming. The goal is to open the hub by 2031.  

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