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Hello friends, welcome to our recap of the last board meeting before the election. Don't forget to vote!

OK, let's get into it...

🌶️ Spice in the Comments Section

Every meeting the board makes time for comments on items not on the agenda. During this week’s public comment time, both principals and leaders of the Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Group (MSEG) came to the mic.  

The UAOS (administrators union) showed up to advocate for a contract. President Carey Kauffman announced that the union is declaring “work to rule”, where members will only work their contracted 7.5 hours. “📺We have spent years giving the district our evenings, our weekends, our lunch, our time with our families. And what has it gotten? No raise, no contract, no relief on workload."  Multiple high school principals also advocated for return of measure H funds (used to support college and career pathways programs).

MSEG is a volunteer-led forum to gather community input on OUSD budget priorities. As co-leader Matt Glazer explained, MSEG leaders and participants spoke out in response to Director Hutchinson’s comments from a previous meeting, in which he questioned the legitimacy of the “self-appointed” volunteers running the group.

Our take: We think both groups made valid points! Principals have brutally difficult jobs, made harder by the district’s financial situation (as they explained in their letter last spring). Their union is the only one that hasn’t gotten a raise.It’s hard to even imagine how schools will run without principals putting in hours of unpaid overtime, and it’s very fair for them to make that point by starting work to rule.

We also understand MSEG’s frustration. The district cut its family engagement team down to one person this spring, so this forum could not exist without volunteer leaders. MSEG is creating much-needed space for the community to participate in the hard decisions required to balance OUSD’s budget.  We often promote MSEG in this newsletter, and we appreciate their work. (If you do too, you can sign a statement of support for MSEG.)

💰📈 Budget Update

Context: OUSD began last year facing a $100+M budget deficit. During the year the district implemented a “Fiscal Stabilization Plan” at the board’s direction.  The plan has reduced the deficit, but work remains to fully stabilize district finances.  The board has committed to further reduce expenses by $30M this year.

This meeting: Tara Gard presented an update that hit on some key points she’s emphasized previously:

• The challenges aren’t recent: the district’s finances have been unstable for 20 years
• The district has made real progress, reducing recurring expenses by $28M 
• The Alameda County Office of Education agrees the financial picture has improved, and found no evidence the district had misrepresented its finances (contradicting claims of fraud by Director Mike Hutchinson)

Director Comment:

Director Hutchinson expressed disappointment at the update, saying that this report repeated the same targets as the previous one. “I expect to at least see a different document every month. ... Everything you talked about is stuff that was already done in the past, a recap. There is no work and no plan.” Gard pointed him to the attached memo, which did report on progress.  Hutchinson asked why that information wasn’t in the presentation.

Director Latta asked about the special education target, as it’s the largest line item by far. She applauded the special education team’s work to reduce costs by replacing contractors with full time staff. She also asked Gard to confirm that the $11M in increased special education revenue from the state will help us hit this target, which Gard did.

Berry was glad to hear Gard commit to more frequent reports, but said “I want more substantive updates, and that feels necessary.” Later she added “📺I think it’s critical to begin implementing a formal plan that is beyond these individual fragmented strategies. … Right I don’t think it adds up the way we need it to for us not to be in this exact same place next year. I think we’re all trying to avoid 400 layoffs in March.”  

In response to Director Berry’s questions, Bachelor said she felt district leadership has been very transparent. Bachelor asked Gard to explain the district’s use of measure N, H, and G1 funds (which the principals had criticized earlier in the evening). Gard explained that the funds had been used on activities intended by the measure, and Bachelor thanked her for addressing the “community confusion” around use of those funds. (For more information on the disputes around use of bond measure funds, read Oaklandside's recent article). 

Our take: Many of the directors seemed to be using their question time to tell a story to the community. Hutchinson’s basic question: “Isn’t it true that we’re off track, why is there no plan?”  Latta and Bachelor, on the other hand, both asked questions that prompted Gard to reassure the community. Their message: the district is on track to a stable financial future. It’s unsurprising that directors use board meetings as a platform to convince the public that the district is (or is not) on track to financial stability.

Only Director Berry seemed focused on learning about whether the district is on track. She seemed to have reviewed the report closely, pointing to specific line items and explaining the additional detail she wants to see in future updates (projected savings, not just a list of completed actions).

Let’s illustrate Berry’s point about the need for more detail by breaking down one example: the goal to reduce Special Education contributions from the general fund by $14.7M. (Note: the district receives funds to pay for special education students, but these funds don’t come close to covering the cost. OUSD, like most districts, uses the general fund to make up the difference. The goal here isn’t to reduce services, but to minimize the extent to which those services draw from the general fund. For more on special education, see “Understanding OUSD’s Budget”)  

The progress report memo Gard shared included this update:

To paraphrase, it says “We’ve completed some work, we had a $12M target last year that we did not realize, and we still expect the $14.7M reduction this year.” That’s the same amount the team has been projecting since at least June.

But the picture has changed since June, in both positive and negative ways. The district shared some of those trends in a recent Community Advisory Committee meeting:

• ☀️The district will receive $11M in increased special education funding from the state.
• ☀️The special education team has insourced work that was previously done by contractors, saving at least $650K
• ⁠🌧️238 students more than anticipated are in self-contained special education classrooms. It’s good that students are receiving the services they need, but it will increase costs.
• 🌧️More students need individual aides. That's expected to increase costs by $4M this year.

The district cannot possibly still expect to save exactly $14.7M.  The trends above have moved that number, either up or down.  We can’t tell you what the new expected savings number is, but you know who can?  The district’s finance team.  It’s their job to model these trends so they can update the $14.7M savings projection, and Berry is right to expect that update.  Without it, the board may be surprised by bad news later in the year, and forced to make a rushed decision on more layoffs.  

Another Enrollment Update

Context: OUSD enrollment has been declining for years, and OUSD is not alone. Enrollment is dropping for most large urban districts. Enrollment directly impacts OUSD’s budget, because the state uses the average number of students attending school to calculate funding.

This meeting: Now that OUSD has finalized its enrollment count, Director Kilian Betlach presented the official annual enrollment report. The findings in this report are consistent with those Betlach previewed in the last meeting, including:

• Enrollment fell 152 students short of OUSD’s budget projections
• Kindergarten enrollment decreased by 103 students
• Enrollment in self-contained classrooms increased, which will increase special education costs (as noted above)
• Newcomer enrollment (students who recently arrived in the United States and are learning English) declined by a shocking 985 students this year, due to ICE anti-immigration activities.

Betlach explained that some enrollment trends (immigration, affordability, birth rates) are out of the district’s control, but there are things the district can do to improve enrollment.  TK programs and high school career pathways are drivers of families choosing OUSD.  Betlach also presented data suggesting the district’s investment in enrollment stabilization had been improving enrollment.  (The enrollment stabilization team was cut last spring).

Public comment: 

Community Member Carol Delton said that if newcomer enrollment went down by 1000 students, but total enrollment only went down by 257 students, then non-newcomer enrollment must have gone up.  She said we should be asking what OUSD is doing right on enrollment.

Parent and Measure G1 Oversight Commissioner Brandon Wall asked why there had been no discussion of the financial implications of this enrollment drop. He also sounded the alarm about the 103 student drop in kindergarten enrollment, as each student lost will affect district finances for 13 years. 

Director comments:

Director Williams commented that investing in enrollment seemed like a “no-brainer” because of the revenue generated by that investment.  Director Brouhard said that Betlach had “raised a good point” about the positive impact of the enrollment stabilization work, and asked him what part of that work he felt had been most effective.  At this point Saddler jumped in to remind the board that the district had saved a million dollars by cutting the program. 

Our take: As we expressed in our last newsletter, we are frustrated that the board cut funding and positions on the enrollment team. Directors and district leaders seem to agree that that investment has more than paid for itself. 

We’re also heartbroken by the loss of almost a thousand newcomer students. The federal government’s inhumane immigration policies have been terrible for Oakland in many ways, and last night’s news about the dramatic decline in newcomer students adds to that list.

Also on the agenda:

• The board renewed Downtown Charter Academy’s charter for 5 years.  The DCA community shared compelling data and inspiring stories about their school.  It was lovely to see the board united in support of DCA.
• Martha Pena, district’s afterschool program coordinator, presented the afterschool program plan, explaining how the district will spend afterschool funding provided by the state.  The state’s  “Expanded Learning Opportunities Program” (ELOP) has allowed the district to dramatically expand access to afterschool programs since the pandemic.

In other news:

• Alameda County Superintendent Alysse Castro is writing a six-part series on OUSD.  The first installment says Oakland needs an educational vision, and the budget should be aligned to that vision. “For years, school board elections have focused on what should not be cut, closed, or changed. Those concerns are legitimate, but an educational vision cannot consist only of a list of things we refuse to change—especially when so few are satisfied with the status quo.”  The second post asks why OUSD keeps having to cut its budget when it receives much more in revenue per student than most urban school districts.  Both are worth a read!
• The state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assessment Team (FCMAT) released a Fiscal Health Risk Assessment for OUSD.  The district received a score that put it in the “high risk” category.
• The Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Group (MSEG) has a fall retreat on Nov 14. “This will be a retreat-style gathering where we expand our view of OUSD’s basic staffing costs to what is centrally allocated, and engage with past and new participants to put it all together.”

Thanks for reading!

Anna, Bekah, and Jess