They also include network superintendents and assistant principals, two roles that are critical to school principals. At many schools, the cuts will mean school principals are the sole instructional leader left on campus \u2013 while getting less support from the central office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the positions were funded with one-time COVID relief funds that have expired, district leaders said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Critics of the cuts expressed concern during the meeting\u2019s public comments section that they seemed to have been carried out in a haphazard way, without a clear strategy behind them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-13\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-13.jpg\")
Malayha Kuykendall, a sixth grader at Frick United Academy of Language, urges the school board to vote against the layoffs as Ashley Vega, an eighth grader, is comforted during the Feb. 25, 2026, school board meeting. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
Director Patrice Berry, who voted against one slate of layoffs and abstained on the other, raised questions about how students would be served without those staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cA reduction in force of this scale and size will lead to significant and material changes,\u201d said Berry, who represents District 5. \u201cThere will be services that we cannot provide, and I want to understand how we will fill those gaps. Are we going to absorb some of those services into other things and roles? Are we going to stop those programs and services?\u201d<\/p>\n
Principals urge the restoration of positions<\/p>\n
Directors Rachel Latta, Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams, Valarie Bachelor, and Clifford Thompson all voted to approve the layoffs. Director Mike Hutchinson voted against them, and Director Berry voted against the classified reductions and abstained during the vote on certificated positions. The board\u00a0 passed an amendment requiring Saddler, if she identifies new sources of funding, come back to the board with recommendations on using those funds to restore student-facing positions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some school communities have turned to fundraising to try to keep some of their staff<\/a>, but to succeed some PTSAs would have to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars on short notice.<\/p>\n Last month, 30 elementary school principals signed a letter to the board urging them to fully fund community school managers, who connect families with community resources; teachers on special assignment, who coach other teachers and provide professional development; attendance specialists, who monitor student attendance and help address chronic absenteeism; site-based substitutes, who are able to provide coverage when teachers are out; and noon supervisors, who look after students during lunch and recess and allow teachers to take their breaks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe stand to lose nine beloved faculty and an additional eight face significant reductions,\u201d Ella Every-Wortman, a teacher at Frick United Academy of Language, said at the meeting. \u201cThis impacts the educational experience of our students. We\u2019ve built a community school at Frick and we need every one of those staff to help students thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n Latta said she recognized that they could upend how schools function.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t presented a plan to tell people what school is going to look like in August,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat are the things that we are going to do to serve our students differently and to fill in the gaps that we ultimately can\u2019t afford any longer?\u201d<\/p>\n Saddler, whose one-year term is up at the end of June, reminded the community of the parameters the board had set<\/a> to guide how she and her team carry out budget cuts for next year: keep all schools open, shrink the central office first, reduce reliance on outside contracts, and focus on increasing enrollment and attendance. But she was candid that layoffs were still a necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRight now there\u2019s not enough money we\u2019re going to be receiving to maintain our current staff \u2014 that\u2019s the real deal,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Saddler added that the central office is so small now that certain functions, like payroll, are going to take longer. And she broached school closures.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the same number of schools that they had when I started in this district,\u201d said Saddler, who began as a teacher in OUSD more than 40 years ago. \u201cThere were 54,000 students. We now have 34,000 students. And we have the same number of schools. That has costs.\u201d<\/p>\n The board\u2019s budget plan<\/a> was designed to address a $102 million projected shortfall for next year. Some of the planned cuts include reducing the district\u2019s central office<\/a> by $32 million, cutting school site budgets<\/a> by up to 10% for another $32 million, shifting the costs of some positions and schools from the unrestricted general fund to more restricted resources, decreasing special education spending by 10% or $12 million, and increasing attendance by 2% to bring in an additional $10 million in state revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n The district\u2019s fiscal advisors, who were hired from Hazard, Young, Attea, and Associates after the chief business officer Lisa Grant-Dawson resigned in December, have yet to present details on some parts of the plan, such as the legality of the special education funding decrease, or whether a 2% increase in attendance is realistic this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hutchinson, who represents District 4, has opposed the school board\u2019s direction since 2025. He called out the board for not presenting a comprehensive strategy or vision behind the layoffs, which he voted against.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is nothing to inform any of the decisions that are listed here,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cThis is work that we should have done months ago that I was asking for to be done months ago, and it never got done. This is the outcome of not doing the work.\u201d<\/p>\n Several parents and community members criticized the board for what they called a lack of vision and transparency about how these positions were chosen for elimination.<\/p>\n \u201cAny functional organization facing a crisis like this would do a little bit of everything: Trim contracts, consolidate facilities, right-size administration, and protect the people closest to the students,\u201d said David Chow, a parent at Sequoia Elementary. \u201cInstead, we\u2019re here at the twilight of our budget approval window, voting on whether to gut school-level staff. Who\u2019s going to do the actual work of restructuring this district? Because this board has had a year and we\u2019re still in triage mode.\u201d<\/p>\n OUSD teachers voted to authorize a strike last Friday, seven months after their contract expired. The next bargaining session with the Oakland Education Association is scheduled for today. OEA and OUSD have yet to come to an agreement on compensation or class sizes for early grades.<\/p>\n The teachers union could call a strike at any time. The school board has another special meeting Friday evening to discuss labor negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the middle of tense contract negotiations with its teachers union, the Oakland Unified School District board approved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,33145,3039],"class_list":{"0":"post-195850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news","11":"tag-ousd-board","12":"tag-ousd-budget"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195850","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=195850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-09\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-09.jpg\")
Denise Saddler, interim superintendent of OUSD, listens to a speaker during the Feb. 26 school board meeting. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n![\"OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-03\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-03.jpg\")
Sharon Thomas, a substitute teacher with 23 years of full-time teaching experience, left, holds a sign while listening to the Feb. 25 school board meeting. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n