{"id":27880,"date":"2025-10-29T01:34:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T01:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/27880\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T01:34:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T01:34:20","slug":"online-non-profit-serves-native-american-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/27880\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Non-Profit Serves Native American Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTeachers\u2019 union calls for spending plan that prioritizes classrooms and student services<\/p>\n

By Post Staff\n<\/p>\n

Seeking to avoid the threat of a state or county takeover of the Oakland Unified School District, the Board of Education has adopted recommendations designed to provide guidelines to the superintendent and administration to resolve an ongoing budget deficit for this year and the next two years.<\/p>\n

A resolution on budget guidance was approved at the Oct. 8 board meeting by board members Rachel Latta, Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams, and Valarie Bachelor. Voting \u2018no\u2019 were board members Mike Hutchinson, Patrice Berry, and Clifford Thompson.\n<\/p>\n

After 22 years, OUSD was finally released from state receivership<\/a>\u00a0in July. Facing a new deficit, the district is now urgently dealing with the threat of a new state or county takeover.\n<\/p>\n

The board resolution passed at the Oct. 8 board meeting directs Supt. Denise Saddler and her administration to implement a hiring freeze and review openings for new positions. Other possible savings include freezing or canceling consulting contracts, reducing travel expenses, and consolidating other purchases.\n<\/p>\n

Whatever the district decides, none of the possibilities will include school closures or mergers, according to the board resolution.\n<\/p>\n

District staff is expected to come back in November with budget proposals for the 2026-27 school year, including restructuring the central office, reducing administrative positions, and cutting spending on consulting contracts, as well as ways to increase enrollment.<\/p>\n

TrendingOP-ED: Will City Preserve Oakland Auditorium for the People of Oakland?<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking at the board meeting, Saddler said, \u201cWhat I need from all of you is to hear what the parameters are of what you would like staff to look at so we can do our best work to bring you options.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to respect that every single one of you has been doing some thinking about this and writing about it and have amendments and proposals,\u201d she continued. \u201cI urge you to give us the outside of the puzzle so we can go forth and do our best work.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Oakland Post, Williams explained that a new board was elected last November and started in January.\u00a0 The board approved cuts in March of over $100 million to exit state receivership.\u00a0 And additional cuts of $60-$80 million are requested for 2026-2027, \u201cwhich means up to $180 million within a year cycle, about 20% of the annual budget, raising the risk of returning to state receivership,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

According to Williams the district carried high deficits with layoffs in 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23, and prior boards \u201ckicked the can down the road\u201d rather than dealing with the deficits.\n<\/p>\n

Past board presidents Sam Davis, Mike Hutchinson, Gary Yee, and Shanthi Gonzales \u201cdid not address the problems, leaving the current board to solve them,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

Further, Willliams said, Alameda County Supt. of Schools Alysse Castro and the state agency, Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT) \u201cgave qualified budget approvals for four years. They could have (halted) raises or spending but did not, expecting eventual cuts without mandating immediate reductions.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

As a result, he said the \u201cboard needs to make major budget decisions this year within the next few weeks due to a looming fiscal cliff and threat of state receivership.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cReductions cannot come solely from central office or consultants,\u201d Williams said. \u201cEverything is on the table, including afterschool (programs), special education, and school restructuring.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In a statement to the community, OUSD Chief Budget Officer Lisa Grant-Dawson wrote, \u201cThe district must develop a plan to restore its reserves as we navigate through the 2025-26 budget and prepare for the 2026-27 Budget Development process. The district will present its first Interim Report in December, reflecting its revised projections for the budget and reserves, which will then be reviewed by the County.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we have been saying since early in the 2024-25 school year,\u00a0the District is currently deficit-spending\u00a0about $4 million per month, that is, spending $4 million more every month than it\u2019s receiving in revenues. The more we do that moving forward, the more we diminish our reserves, until, eventually, we run out of money.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a school district where the mission is educating children, we cannot run out of money, and the State and County won\u2019t let that happen,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we need to prevent it from getting to that point in the first place. The district will need to make some very difficult choices in the near future to remain financially solvent.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

According to the Oakland Education Association (OEA), the teachers\u2019 union, which is currently negotiating with the district for a new contract, the district traditionally distorts its budget, minimizing its revenue and maximizing its expenses to avoid increasing employee wages.\n<\/p>\n

In a presentation to teachers and families, OEA President Kampala Taiz-Rancifer said, \u201cThe City of Oakland has a long history of standing up for the most marginalized in our community. And we need OUSD to stand up and be a part of protecting Oakland students by really investing in our school sites.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Continuing, she said, \u201cOur main job in this district is to teach children, and we need OUSD to change its priorities from (spending its money) outsourcing, contracting out, and investing in top-level management to really providing a student-centered budget.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe district has spent too much on the wrong things, too much on outside contracting and on central office administration while also simultaneously having this history of under-projecting revenue,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a vision for a student-centered budget that invests in our school,\u201d Rancifer said. \u201cWe need to restructure the budget to prioritize students and staff, making a student-centered budget that invests in classrooms and student services.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

According to OEA, \u201cOUSD receives nearly $1 billion yearly to fund our schools \u2014 yet only 56% of that goes to student-facing staff. Our students feel the daily impact through high teacher- and support staff- turnover. Districts like San Diego Unified prove it\u2019s possible to do better, investing 80% of funds directly into the people who serve students.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teachers\u2019 union calls for spending plan that prioritizes classrooms and student services By Post Staff Seeking to avoid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[20752,15,20979,93,20980,20734,143,145,144,957,20981,958,1997,20982,20983,20984],"class_list":["post-27880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-black-owned-business","tag-education","tag-educational","tag-featured","tag-nahem","tag-nonprofit-organization","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-post","tag-online-tutors","tag-post-news-group","tag-schools","tag-support-black-owned-business","tag-tutoring","tag-vallejo-non-profit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27880","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=27880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}