OUSD has $100M in cuts to make. School sites won’t be exempt

This is part two of a two-part series about the OUSD budget. Read part one, about the central office, here.

The Oakland school board has learned that cutting $100 million from Oakland Unified School District without touching school sites is a tall order.

For years, the district has been spending more money than it brings in, and one-time funds of the COVID years have run out. Not only does the district need to make cuts, it needs to fundamentally restructure the way it spends money in a more efficient manner. If the board can’t come up with a plan to reduce the 2026-2027 budget by $100 million, the district risks another state takeover.  

OUSD school board meeting
The school board is expected to vote today on a plan to cute $100 million from next year’s budget. There will be opportunities for public comment.

Time: 5:30 p.m.
Date: Wednesday, Dec. 10
Location: The Great Room at La Escuelita Elementary School, 1050 2nd Ave.
Zoom link

This fall, OUSD staff was asked by the board to present budget scenarios that protect schools by focusing on cuts at the central office headquarters. Even by proposing deep cuts, they only came up with $21 million in savings.

At tonight’s board meeting, interim superintendent Denise Saddler and her staff will present a broader strategy for reaching $100 million. That strategy will not leave schools untouched, as Saddler stated plainly in her report:

“This analysis continues to affirm that…cutting ‘around’ school spending will not yield the outcomes the district has struggled to receive,” she wrote. 

Saddler’s report suggests $102,460,000 in cuts that include the $21 million from restructuring the central office, plus $32 million from school site budgets. The remaining savings will come from an additional 15% to 20% reduction at the central office; shifting the costs of some small schools, attendance clerks, and noon supervisor roles from the general fund to restricted funding sources; and a 10% — $12 million — reduction in special education spending.

At the end of her note, Saddler asks the board to commit to the full restructuring plan, which will require reducing the number of schools in OUSD through closures or mergers. 

“We are now at a critical crossroads,” Saddler wrote. “This reality requires difficult, disciplined choices; choices that impact every part of the district, including school sites, central office, operations, programs, and contracted services.” 

The funding patchwork at school sites

Understanding the impact of Saddler’s proposal on individual schools requires understanding how those schools are funded.

School budgets are a mix of state funding, based on attendance, through the Local Control Funding Formula; federal title funding (such as Title I funds that go to schools serving low-income families and Title IV for academic enrichment); various state propositions (such as Prop. 28, which funds arts and music programs); state grants (such as the California Community Schools Partnership Program); local tax measures (such as Measures G, G1, and H that fund teacher retention, middle school electives, and college readiness); private philanthropy (from foundations or corporations such as Eat. Learn. Play. and Salesforce); and fundraising (by parent teacher associations or local community groups).

The Local Control Funding Formula money is split into the base grant, the largest pot of money which all districts receive based on overall average daily attendance, and then concentration and supplemental grants, which are based on the numbers of English learners, foster youth, and low-income students. 

Principals, general education teachers, and clerical staff are largely paid for through the base fund. Other staff at school sites typically rely on supplemental or discretionary funding. 

As at the central office, most spending at school sites is on staff. Every school has a principal, teachers, a community school manager, and front office staff. Beyond that, roles such as assistant principals, aides, tutors, counselors, and nurses, are based on need and funding. Larger schools, such as high schools, may have multiple assistant principals and culture keepers, who oversee school safety; a small elementary school may have none. 

Saddler’s proposed plan doesn’t mandate what exactly each school site would cut.

Those decisions would come after the board approves the plan and each school leader consults with parent groups, the school site council (a body that has a hand in directing funding), students, and community members. But those cuts would be deep, amounting to 7.5% to 10% of each school’s budget. They could easily include cuts to things like sports, student clubs, after school programs, and other extra curricular programming that schools pay for with discretionary funding. And they will likely mean layoffs. 

A history of cuts

Schools’ supplemental budgets were slashed significantly for this school year. For 2024-2025, OUSD schools received $18.5 million in supplemental funding; for the 2025-2026 school year, that number shrank to about $2.8 million. 

Each year, every school puts together a School Plan for Student Achievement that outlines how they’ll use their discretionary funding, which includes federal title funds, state supplemental funds, and local parcel tax funding to increase student outcomes. These plans look very different for the district’s largest and smallest schools.

When Sondra Aguilera, OUSD’s chief academic officer, asked principals about the most crucial positions at their schools, they mentioned literacy tutors, case managers, teachers on special assignment (educators who coach other teachers), and community school managers. 

Carl B. Munck Elementary, a small school in the East Oakland Hills with about 170 students, received $45,000 in federal Title I funding this school year and about $651,000 in state and local funding. That amount includes $150,000 from a state fund for after school and summer programs, a $328,000 community schools grant from the state, $133,333 for after school education, nearly $28,000 from Prop. 28, and about $12,000 in supplemental Local Control Formula funding. 

Based on its school plan, Carl B. Munck intends to spend those funds on salaries for teacher coaches in literacy and math, contracts with community organizations to run after school programs, contracted mental health consultants, a literacy tutor, a performing arts teacher, transportation for field trips, and school supplies. In some cases, multiple discretionary funds will pay for a portion of a staff person’s salary.

Oakland High School, with about 1,600 students, received $749,000 in federal funding, including nearly $530,000 from Title 1 and $222,000 from Title IV, a grant established by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act for academic enrichment. Oakland High also received $796,000 from state and local funding, including $148,000 in supplemental funding (down from $949,000 the previous year), $360,000 from a state community schools grant, $263,000 from Prop. 28, and $25,000 from a state program for after school education. 

In its student achievement plan, Oakland High plans to spend its money on stipends for staff providing interpretation and translation services; salaries for teachers providing reading and math intervention; a college and career readiness specialist; stipends for teachers and staff running study halls; contracts with the East Bay Asian Youth Center, which runs the afterschool program and does school-day programming; stipends for teachers covering prep periods for other teachers; stipends for teachers who work with students on after school music performances; overtime for classified staff, like custodians who clean up after evening performances; Advanced Placement exam fees; and school supplies. 

Many of these discretionary spends will be at risk with budget cuts of up to 10%.

Thin evidence that closing schools saves moneys

Saddler is recommending the board return to an issue that has sparked massive community pushback in recent years: school closures and mergers. Although enrollment has ticked up this year over last year, the district has lost about 3,000 students in the last decade. 

“I am asking you to accept reducing the current footprint of the district which includes school closures and mergers, in addition to the reduction in central office networks, reduction of contracts, focusing on minimizing outsourcing, and increased attendance as part of the accompanying significant school closures,” she said in her report.  

Closing could eventually lead to some revenue generation for the district as it leases out empty buildings or land. In the past, closed OUSD schools have also become centers for adult education, early childhood education, and special education. 

But the vacant properties could also end up as liabilities if the district allows them to deteriorate. 

Critics of school closures say that the disruption can be harmful to students’ academic performance and often disproportionately affect Black, Latino, and low-income students.

The last time OUSD closed schools was in 2022, when it closed Parker Elementary in East Oakland and Community Day School in the Oakland Hills. It also merged New Highland Academy and RISE Community Elementary, in East Oakland, into one school. OUSD has never publicly presented documentation of any savings from those closures. 

After an earlier round of restructuring in 2019 and 2020, which included closures, mergers, and expansions, the district presented a 2021 report on the outcomes. At Sankofa United Elementary, which merged with Kaiser Elementary on the Sankofa campus, the total school budget decreased by about $909,000, or 24%, in the year after the merger. But there was a student exodus: 17% of Kaiser students left OUSD, an attrition rate nearly three times that of OUSD overall that year. Only about 23% of Kaiser students matriculated to Sankofa. The remaining 60% transferred to another OUSD school in the year after the merger. Enrollment at the new Sankofa United was 52% lower than the two schools combined student populations before the merger. 

At Frick United Academy of Language, a new school created by the merger of Frick Middle School and Oakland School of Language, the budget of the new school was only about $62,000 lower than the two schools’ previous combined budgets, and enrollment was 13% lower.  

After the former Alliance Academy merged with Elmhurst Middle School, the new school, Elmhurst United, saw its budget increase by 10%, or about $647,000 over the budget of the two schools the year before. The new school gained a total of 67 new students and nine additional staff.

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