Thanks to labor pay raises, Oakland Unified will be $121 million in the red come 2025
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Oakland Unified School District may find it easier to recruit teachers going forward, considering its latest generous contract (which will drain $110 million over three years). But, the SF Standard wonders, how will OUSD stay afloat if it's already struggling to pay the bills—yet while refusing to shutter underperforming campuses?
Oakland [Unified School District] — with about 33,000 students — has long had about twice as many schools as districts with similar enrollment.
The numbers put an exclamation point on state and county officials’ concerns that the district may struggle in the coming years to pay the bills given the number of schools with half-filled classrooms. These shrinking and under-enrolled schools contribute to the district’s escalating costs, which will continue to grow amid significant raises for teachers and other staff won after a strike last school year.
“OUSD has some schools that have enrollment under their school design, which makes the district less operationally and financially efficient,” said district spokesperson John Sasaki. “Likewise, low overall enrollment relative to our staffing levels makes us inefficient as compared to our peer districts. The more that enrollment declines, the harder it will be to sustain these schools.”
The current school board has rejected the idea of school closures, saying under-enrolled schools need a “redesign” with enough resources to lure families back, while arguing that the raises were crucial because the only way to recruit and retain teachers is to pay them a living wage.
So far, the board hasn’t explained how it will pay for all that.
The district already was at risk of failing to pay its bills over the next two years even before adding in the cost of the teacher contract approved in June, estimated to cost $110 million over the next three years. And that doesn’t include pending raises for other labor groups, Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Alysse Castro warned in a letter to the district last week.
Currently, the district expects to overspend by $121 million in the 2025-2026 school years, according to a projection submitted to the county Wednesday.
This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the whole thing here.
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