{"id":194820,"date":"2026-02-26T13:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T13:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/194820\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T13:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T13:53:12","slug":"oakland-unified-school-board-approves-hundreds-of-layoffs-amid-100m-budget-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/194820\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland Unified school board approves hundreds of layoffs amid $100M budget deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Emotions were running high Wednesday at the Oakland Unified School District&#8217;s board meeting. The OUSD board was divided over whether to eliminate hundreds of jobs for the next school year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Those cuts come as the district faces a budget deficit of $100 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;This is the worst crisis OUSD has ever faced. Period,&#8221; said Mike Hutchinson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">School board member Hutchinson has been a vocal critic of many of the board&#8217;s decisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/articles\/oakland-teachers-school-district-resume-052049831.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:Oakland teachers, school district resume labor talks; OUSD posts proposed $102M budget cuts;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oakland teachers, school district resume labor talks; OUSD posts proposed $102M budget cuts<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">He and some of his colleagues believe they&#8217;ve delayed dealing with the district&#8217;s financial issues for months, leaving them to now make last minute choices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;We don&#8217;t even know what&#8217;s possible yet. We never did the work to see what are our options,&#8221; said Hutchinson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;These are big questions. And I don&#8217;t have any of the answers. And I have issue with that,&#8221; said school board member Patrice Berry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">During the meeting both staff and members of the public expressed frustration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cary Kaufman is the president of United Administrators of Oakland Schools. He thinks the district is in an impossible situation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/articles\/oakland-teachers-prepare-strike-over-073100211.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:Oakland teachers prepare for strike over pay, wanting smaller class size; though, no start date set;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oakland teachers prepare for strike over pay, wanting smaller class size; though, no start date set<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;I am very concerned about the proposed cuts, and I am extremely concerned about no cuts happening tonight and us losing local control and having the state or the county step in,&#8221; said Kaufman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In addition to the job cuts, the district is also looking for ways to trim the deficit &#8212; suggesting early retirement incentives and other ideas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;What we were doing did not work, so we have to make something different, and we have to make those tough decisions,&#8221; said school board member Valarie Bachelor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">And while everyone will feel some amount of pain, many say it&#8217;s the district&#8217;s students who will be impacted the most.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t really represent responsible action. Neither does anything that we&#8217;ve seen here. I feel like we&#8217;ve been failed by everyone,&#8221; said Hutchinson.<\/p>\n<p><a data-ylk=\"ct:story;elm:img;itc:0;\" class=\"stretched-box\" href=\"https:\/\/abc7news.com\/abc-news-live-local-watch\/11513295\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/131c44567cfd550c1c93df1368fb6896.jpeg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">If you&#8217;re on the ABC7 News app, <a href=\"https:\/\/abc7news.com\/abc-news-live-local-watch\/11513295\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:click here to watch live;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">click here to watch live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emotions were running high Wednesday at the Oakland Unified School District&#8217;s board meeting. The OUSD board was divided&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[55230,20005,143,145,144,8212],"class_list":{"0":"post-194820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-board-meeting","9":"tag-mike-hutchinson","10":"tag-oakland","11":"tag-oakland-headlines","12":"tag-oakland-news","13":"tag-ousd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194820","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=194820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}