OAKLAND — Oakland Unified’s school board concedes it may be operating more schools than it has money for, as the Alameda County civil grand jury maintains.
The grand jury’s report, issued in June, pointed out that despite a sharp drop in enrollment over the past 15 years, from 54,000 to 37,000 students — resulting in less funding in from the state — the district still operates 87 schools with an average school size of 412 students. Fremont Unified has a similar student population of 35,000 but only has 42 schools open, the report noted.
The school board, in its formal response to the report, agreed that the district will continue operating at a fiscal deficit and will become insolvent if it keeps the same number of schools open under current conditions. The district is amid a multi-million dollar budget crisis and seeks to cut about $30 million next year to remain fiscally solvent.
The board is concerned, though, that consolidating schools could cause families to pull their kids from public schools. That would mean Oakland Unified would get even less funding from the state, since school district funding is based on enrollment.
“Reducing the number of district-operated schools is one way to reduce expenditures,” board members said in its response. “However … school consolidations need to be thoughtful and focused upon increasing quality options for all students.”
An independent study by Stanford University’s School Redesign Network found that the Oakland community values small schools, and regarded many small schools as successful, the response said. However, the grand jury found that 20 of the district’s 35 schools with enrollment of less than 400 students are under-performing academically.
The board’s special committee on fiscal vitality is looking at other ways to eliminate the deficit, including increasing enrollment or cutting down on expenses, the report said. The school board’s response did not go into detail about how the district intends to do those things.
The grand jury report scolded the district for opening two new schools during the 2017-18 school year with a $15 million deficit. The school board pointed out that one of the schools mentioned in the report — Rudsdale High, a continuation school in East Oakland — was not new, and had been open since 2001. The district did however open the Rudsdale Newcomer School at the Castlemont High campus last year, Oakland Unified spokesman John Sasaki confirmed. That school has about 100 students and caters to immigrants.
The other school — the School of Languages dual-language middle school — was the result of a lengthy planning process and helps meets the district’s need of more multilingual programs, the board said.
The school board addressed other failings pointed out in the grand jury report in its response. The board voted Sept. 12 to submit its response by the Sept. 26 deadline, but plans to add an addendum later that will go into more detail.
The district agreed with the finding that administrators and school board members’ circumventing budgeting policies and interfere with the superintendent’s responsibilities have contributed to the financial issues. But the district said it does not believe those efforts were intentional, given it’s “theory of action” to allow principals autonomy over staffing and financing decisions.
The district also agreed with the grand jury’s finding that high turnover of top administrators has “created an atmosphere or mistrust, destroying the continuity of the district’s educational mission and crippled the district’s effectiveness in addressing its most pressing fiscal issues.”
The district partly agreed with the grand jury’s finding that collaboration between traditional public schools and charter schools would benefit all students. District officials said they “fighting with charter schools” is a waste of resources, and that the district could successfully collaborate with charters about school quality standards, enrollment, professional development and other things, the report said.
But there are some areas in which district schools and charters have “divergent interests and differential standards imposed by the Education Code,” the report said. The California Charter School Association is suing Oakland Unified over the district’s compliance with Proposition 39, which requires that school districts provide space for charter schools that request it.
The district is “vigorously defending” the litigation, school board members said in the report.
School board president Aimee Eng, in a statement attached to the district’s response, said the district is confident that its new fiscal policies and new Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell will help it reach the balance of good fiscal health and quality education.
“Although the hurdles are significant, the district believes it is on its way toward implementing the recommendations of the grand jury and becoming a fiscally sustainable, quality educational institution with students who are prepared for college, career and community success,” she said.
September 19, 2018
East Bay Times
By Ali Tadayon
No comments:
Post a Comment