{"id":196136,"date":"2026-02-27T07:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/196136\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T07:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:12:08","slug":"oakland-unified-board-votes-to-lay-off-400-workers-to-tackle-massive-budget-shortfall-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/196136\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland Unified board votes to lay off 400 workers to tackle massive budget shortfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oakland Unified School District board approved a proposal Wednesday to lay off roughly 400 workers in an effort to cope with a massive budget shortfall<\/a> and declining enrollment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The layoffs will hit both the central office administration as well as the district\u2019s 80 or so schools and are projected to save about $11 million in the next fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The need for dramatic cost-cutting is driven by declining enrollment, the expiration of one-time funding the district received to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a roughly $100 million structural deficit that threatens OUSD\u2019s financial solvency, according to a report from interim Superintendent Denise Saddler\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Saddler said that the district\u2019s student population has shrunk from 54,000 students to 34,000 students \u2014 but the smaller number of kids still attend the same number of school campuses and the board made an earlier decision to tackle the deficit without closing schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to reorganize based on the amount of money we receive from the state and federal government and right now there\u2019s not enough money that we are receiving to maintain our current staff. That\u2019s the real deal, to maintain the current buildings that we have and to pay the utilities,\u201d Saddler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very difficult moment for this community,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is very emotional. There are real people involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018This is chaos\u2019<\/p>\n

During the roughly five-hour meeting, dozens of parents, students, teachers and staff addressed the board and implored them to reject the layoff proposal.<\/p>\n

Many lamented the loss of half of the elementary schools\u2019 elective programs, the reduction of an already stretched-thin school nursing staff and the elimination of food service, counselor, tutor and attendance staff, among other cuts.<\/p>\n

Cary Kaufman, president of the United Administrators of Oakland union, said the cuts were made from the \u201cthe top down without true meaningful engagement\u201d and appear to be an attempt to retain local control of the district \u201cat any cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not stability,\u201d Kaufman said. \u201cThis is chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swaicha Chanduri, principal of Joaquin Miller Elementary School, said the district\u2019s principals were largely left out of the planning process that led to the layoffs despite being the people primarily responsible for managing the effects of the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease do not ask us to lead schools stripped to the point where we cannot fulfill the very purpose we claim to stand for,\u201d Chanduri said. \u201cThis is not resistance to change, this is resistance to inequity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chanduri and more than 20 other elementary school principals sent a letter to the board urging them to take another approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are writing because there appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding embedded in the current approach to school funding and the definition of high quality: the notion that the \u2018bare minimum\u2019 required to operate a school is a teacher in each classroom, a principal, and an administrative assistant \u2014 and that anything beyond that is optional, extra, or \u2018nice to have,\u2019\u201d according to the letter. \u201cAs principals doing this work every day, we need to be very clear: this assumption is incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

School board directors Mike Hutchinson and Patrice Berry voted against the layoffs, saying the board wasn\u2019t given enough time and information to thoughtfully consider the proposal.<\/p>\n

Director Rachel Latta agreed that \u201cthere has been less communication than we have been used to\u201d and worried about what school will look like in the next school year.<\/p>\n

Still, she voted for the proposal based on what she sees as the fiscal reality that the district is faced with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to live in a place where we could predict how many students are going to be enrolled and, if we consolidated programs, that they would stay in our district,\u201d Latta said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t live in that environment. We unfortunately live in a district where we\u2019ve created a policy of school choice, where we\u2019ve created a significant number of charter schools over the decades and we have other districts that are very happy to enroll our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s vote took place with a teachers\u2019 strike looming and as the district continues to try to hammer out a new contract agreement with the Oakland Education Association teachers\u2019 union.<\/p>\n

\"\"Members of the Oakland Education Association teachers\u2019 union hold up a sign at rally on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026, near Lake Merritt in Oakland, Calif. (Tanay Gokhale\/Bay City News)<\/p>\n

Union members voted to authorize a strike as early as next week if they can\u2019t reach a deal with district negotiators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

OEA officials said Thursday that the union is opposed to the cuts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur fight to make OUSD stabilize classrooms and address its chronic staffing shortage is also a fight to preserve jobs,\u201d according to a union statement. \u201cThese shortsighted cuts will have long-term impacts on the academic futures of Oakland students for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oakland Unified School District board approved a proposal Wednesday to lay off roughly 400 workers in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,15743,16476,15,8248,6113,143,145,144,91470,3272,22334,5577,5476],"class_list":{"0":"post-196136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-budget-cuts","10":"tag-budget-deficit","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-enrollment","13":"tag-layoffs","14":"tag-oakland","15":"tag-oakland-headlines","16":"tag-oakland-news","17":"tag-oakland-unified-school-board","18":"tag-oakland-unified-school-district","19":"tag-public-schools","20":"tag-staffing","21":"tag-unions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196136","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=196136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}