The Brief<\/p>\n
A Wednesday night school-board meeting considered how OUSD would close a $50M budget gap.<\/p>\n
The district had previously projected at $100M budget gap.<\/p>\n
District leaders are suggesting cuts to central district offices and administrative overhead. Other difficult decisions would have to be made.<\/p>\n
OAKLAND, Calif. – Oakland parents, teachers and students packed a rally Wednesday night as the Oakland Unified School District school board considers how to close a recently revised $50 million budget shortfall for the next academic year. The district formerly projected a $100 million budget gap.<\/p>\n
Budget woes<\/p>\n
What they’re saying<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re out here because we are fighting for a student-centric budget that really focuses the district\u2019s resources on the classroom, on the staff that work directly with the students, instead of focusing on high-paid administrators and costly consultants,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, president of the Oakland Education Association. “Our research has shown that they have plenty of money for staffing, and their analysts found $50 million in three short weeks. We want them to continue to go down that path and do that deep dive.”<\/p>\n
Plan revisions<\/p>\n
During Wednesday night\u2019s school board meeting, board members emphasized that their revised plan includes no school closures and protects alternative education programs.<\/p>\n
“While we\u2019re making $50 million in reductions, we have worked to minimize impacts to the investments that directly serve children,” said one board director.<\/p>\n
District leaders said savings would come in part from cuts at the central district office, including reductions in administrative overhead, along with other difficult decisions across the system.<\/p>\n
Teachers and staff at the rally said they want not only job protection but also higher pay to help retain educators.<\/p>\n
Invested in Oakland<\/p>\n
“Twenty-five percent of the educators in this district leave every year,” said Ian Patton, a school counselor. “I could go to Hayward and make 40 percent more, but I\u2019m invested in Oakland, and I want Oakland to invest in the people who work here.”<\/p>\n
Parents and students echoed those concerns and also called for protecting after-school programs.<\/p>\n
“Our classes are huge, so even the best teachers don\u2019t have enough support in the classroom to do their job well and support a variety of learners,” said parent Margot Schoeo.<\/p>\n
“Teachers and educators are really important to OUSD because they are the ones who make the students feel like it\u2019s a safe space,” said student Luz Martin.<\/p>\n
The school board has until June to adopt a new budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief A Wednesday night school-board meeting considered how OUSD would close a $50M budget gap. The district…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[76030,43704,143,145,144,8212,35316,17257],"class_list":["post-154886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-administrative-overhead","tag-district-leaders","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-ousd","tag-school-board","tag-school-closures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}