The Oakland Unified School District approved a $103 million budget plan that includes vague cuts and hopes to boost attendance rates to generate additional revenue, in an effort to repair its bleak budget hole.<\/p>\n
If the district is unable to pass a balanced budget by June or runs out of cash, Oakland Unified\u00a0could return to state control just months after exiting it<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s board of education approved the cuts by 5-2 margin at last week\u2019s board meeting, which was plagued with board member in-fighting and finger-pointing. Board members Mike Hutchinson and Patrice Berry opposed the budget plan.<\/p>\n
The plan includes $12 million in cuts to special education \u2014 but doesn\u2019t outline how the cuts will be made. It leaves up to schools, rather than the board, about $32 million in cuts to school campus budgets \u2014 trims that could hit athletics, clubs and library services.<\/p>\n
Brought forward by interim superintendent Denise Gail Saddler, the plan also proposes slashing central management staff, reducing overtime, consolidating academic programs, delaying non-critical campus and technology repairs and reducing academic internships and apprenticeships.<\/p>\n
To fill the budget gap, the district also hopes to bring in $20 million by increasing attendance \u2014 2% for this year and 2% for the 2026-27 school year \u2014 since schools in California are funded based on the number of students who attend each day. But the budget scenario doesn\u2019t include how Oakland Unified plans to increase attendance both years. It\u2019s a challenging goal given that schools across the Bay Area, including Oakland Unified, are struggling with declining enrollment and chronic absenteeism. To further increase the number of students, the budget scenario also proposes expanding transitional kindergarten for an additional $1.5 million in revenue \u2014 another change that would likely require additional staffing.<\/p>\n
Oakland Unified board member Hutchinson said the board for failed to \u201cbring forward any plan to address the financial crisis\u201d in a social media post Monday. Hutchinson was critical of the approved budget scenario, which he said was impractical and doesn\u2019t address the fact that the district is currently overspending and has more staff than it can afford.<\/p>\n
\u201cEighty percent of our budget goes to staffing. So if we are going to address a budgetary shortfall, probably 80% of how it\u2019s addressed is going to be staffing,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cThat\u2019s why their so-called solutions are not legitimate and are laughable because they don\u2019t look at where we spend our money and they\u2019re not real plans. That\u2019s why we still don\u2019t have a plan to address $100 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan comes amid several months of financial crisis for the district, which was once projected to run out of cash as early as this fall,<\/a> and two months after the school board was expected to deal with the budget crunch. The cash-strapped district\u2019s once $78 million budget deficit for 2026-27 ballooned to over $100 million. District staff warned that without significant cuts and quick action, Oakland Unified faces bankruptcy, would once again need an emergency loan and would be subject to the same state receivership it was under for 20 years.<\/p>\n