OUSD Board Of Education

The Cantonese alliance minister, mister Hollis.

Thank you, miss Ho. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands. We will not start with Cantonese interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Arabic.

I will lower all attendees hands on zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, which at this time is Arabic. And if you are in attendance, and you need a translation laptop, you can see the gentleman to your left underneath the basketball court for a translation laptop. With that, I will ask Mr. Turek if he can come off of mute and get the interpretation announcement for Arabic.

Our Ms. Abdi, if she can come off of mute and get the interpretation announcement for Arabic.

Thank

you, miss Abdi. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands on Zoom. No hands or people in the room. We will not start with Arabic interpretation at this time.

Moving forward to Spanish, I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, which at this time is spanish. And if you are in attendance and need a translation laptop, you can see the gentleman to your left underneath the basketball court for a translation laptop. With that, I will ask Ms Vargas if she can come off of mute and give the interpretation announcement for Spanish.

Of course. Hand language interpretation Spanish. Spanish announcement is done. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Vargas. Checking the attendees on Zoom to see if there's any hands raised with Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands or people going towards the interpreter with the computers, There will be no languages available at this time. We will make a later announcements for interpretation in the meeting, and I pass it to you, Mr. Rick Straub.

Madam president, the availability the announcement for the availability of translation services has been completed.

Thank you. I'd like to welcome everyone to the February 25 school board meeting. Before we begin, I'd like to oh my goodness. My computer's going crazy. I'd like to emphasize the need for, respectful decorum, both on the dais and among the audience.

The work of the board is serious business and impacts the everyday experiences of our students, staff, families, and broader communities. It is critical that all of us, both up here on the dais and in the audience, model the respectful interactions that we would like to see our students have in their classrooms, on the play yard, or in athletic competitions. As we open tonight's meeting, I urge everyone present and planning to attend to review and abide by the Board of Education protocols and meeting rules of engagement listed on pages eight and nine of tonight's agenda. K. Tonight, there will be ample time for public speaking.

Again, I believe as vice president Bachelor said earlier, speaking cards are to the table over here, and they're deposited on the table. And, again, if you are on Zoom, if you have already preregistered, we will call, your speaker as we come up on the agenda. So tonight, there will be time for, public public comment after the student board members report, after the PSAC report, after the adoption of the general consent report, the adoption of the general consent report facilities, all non agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board, under unfinished business, financial stabilization implementation plan, notice of layoff classified employees, eliminate certificate certificated positions due to reduction of particular kinds of service, and the amendment to perspective additional resolve clause. There will be a public speaking under the second amendment of the district's early retirement incentive, and under new business, the LCAP presentation, and the application for provisional internship, and the amendment of the board policy thirty three twelve. Tonight in closed session, the board under labor matters matters under item d one number twenty five eighteen sixty four conference with labor negotiators.

The board gave direction in this matter. Under legal matters, item d two number 25 dash zero six one three conference with legal counsel, the board did not take this up. Under items d three, number 25 dash twenty seven ten, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, the board did not take this matter up. Under public employment matters, superintendent of schools, item d four, number 24 dash one nine six seven, the board did not take this up. Under pupil matters, item d five through d nine, the board hurt did not take these matters up.

And this is the end of the report out of 02/25/2026 closed session. Tonight, are there any modifications to the agenda? I have quite a few here. So I'll take those first. We are going to hear, in in order, the the, reportable actions, modifications to the agenda, pupil consent, then k, student report, l p sack.

Under then we'll move to s of diminished business. Item s one twenty five dash one three one four l has been pulled from the agenda by staff. Item s two twenty six dash o one six e, financial stabilization implementation plan, protecting equity, maintaining local control, and prioritizing students. Then we'll hear s three notice of lay item sorry. I'm sorry.

Item 26 dash zero four four eight notice of layoff classified employees. Then s four twenty five 26 Dash zero zero zero four four nine eliminate, certificated positions due to reduction of particular kinds of service. S five twenty six dash zero four five seven, amendment of, excuse me, perspective additional resolve clause. And then item s six, the second amendment to the district's early retirement incentive. We will then go to item m, labor partners comments.

Then q, public comment. Then t, new business, and item t one, t two, and t three, then o, the adoption of the general consent report, p, the adoption of consent report facilities, and then we will end with the president's report and board reports and introduction of new legislation. Are there any other amendments to the agenda? Oh, I'm sorry, and we will be returning to closed session at the end of the meeting. So there'll be closed session, and we'll report out.

Student report. We do not have a student report tonight. PSAC.

Thank you, we're actually gonna start with the CAC. There are copies of this agenda item going out as we speak.

Good evening board, I'm JD Wallachian, co chair of the CAC, and I'm gonna read first, the highlights from our February 9 meeting, and we discussed, where different special education programs are located and current enrollment trends and what they mean for programs in the 2627 school year, updates on reductions and changes to the OUSD budget for next year. And the linked documents, are on we don't have slides, but they're on the handouts. It shows the schools where different types of programs are located and how many of each type there are at each school, and that's at httpscolon//tinyurl.combackslash3ruyfyenine. As CAC members, we want to celebrate the schools that have embraced the students that attend special day mental health and low incidence programs, and we understand there are historical reasons why certain schools have these programs and certain schools do not. And all schools must intentionally build communities and programs that fully include students with diverse disability experiences.

About our enrollment patterns, we learned that the number of students who qualify under autism continues to rise, and this has created a greater need for speech and language services, paraeducator support, and neuro affirming training and coaching for general education staff. And two, students who need to attend a non public school or NPS must do so far from Oakland, and those schools are charging increasingly rising fees to OUSD. And three, the need for individual therapy to support the mental health of students is also increasing. And based on what we have learned, we are asking all in the OUSD community to exercise caution when discussing the use of contracted services for disabled students. Community members must understand the urgent needs that must be met in real time and the challenges we have faced in meeting them.

And there is also a link in the handouts for a meeting where the use of special education contracts was discussed in detail. That's https:tinyurl.combackslashyc4rzx2z. And we are asking also asking our OUSD community to understand that what we call the special education budget includes numerous elements that work together to ensure basic education for disabled students. Anyone discussing special education spending must be willing to understand each of those elements, and we ask that you work with us to better resource them and not focus on how to reduce costs. Educating disabled students is a civil rights issue first and foremost.

And we invite everybody to join us at our next meeting on March 9, and the meeting will include a comprehensive report on suspensions, and we will also share information about the extended school year and summer programs. And we'll hand it off to the foster youth. Good

evening, board. I'm Tara Gard for the Foster Youth Advisory Committee. Tonight, we just wanted to talk to you about our foster youth case managers and just highlight the fact that they are, very specific to our foster youth, students. They understand the unique sources of trauma that foster youth face in OUSD. They, spend lots of time working with our students and supporting their growth.

You can see, we shared some data about the foster youth by grade level and you can see that in the community. There's there's overall 161, foster youth that we have documented right now. 40% of those have IEPs. Foster students have IEPs in Oakland. And also, you can see we we shared what schools, where our foster youth are primarily at, and our case managers spend time at these schools supporting our foster youth.

And we wanted to highlight that we're making progress with working with our foster youth. The foster youth suspension rate on 12/09/2025 was seven point nine percent, and that's come down from years prior where it was twelve percent. The IEP's used to be 20%. It's down 11%, and I already talked to you about the suspension rate. And the attendance, foster youth attendance has improved and we do attribute that to the work of, Jennifer Tam, who is the program manager, and then the case managers that are supporting the students.

It's important to know that their attendance has also improved. So we thank you for your time. And I'll move it to okay. Thank you.

Arcelia Gonzalez who is a family engagement staff who has worked intensely to recruit English learner families to our site committees and our district committees is gonna read their report. There are three people who can do these reports and none of them were able to make it at this time. So thank you, Arcelia.

Good evening, board. Like Cynthia said, my name is Arcelia Gonzalez. I am the district's family engagement specialist for network two. I'm just here to read this report for the DELs. As members of the district English language learner subcommittee, we have not had sufficient information or space to discuss how proposed budget reductions will affect English learner, English language learners generally.

We also do not know how the unique services English learners need will be affected. Because of this, we will remind the school board and all decision makers about our ongoing priorities. We have shared these priorities with the board and administrators for the past three years. Prove that all English language learners are getting designated English language development or ELD at their level including all disabled English language learners and newcomers. Strong site English language learner subcommittees or CELs with authentic voice and leadership from families of English learners.

Stopping the practice of site school site councils absorbing CELs and weakening their role. Learning if all English language learner families are getting the interpretation and translation they need. Getting additional support for the unmet needs we already know exist. At first glance, we are concerned about reductions and changes too. District support for school site committees and family engagement, interpretation services, refugee and asylum services.

OUSD has never operated without some base support in those areas. We are concerned about how that support will continue. Join us tomorrow at 06:30PM. We will discuss the English learner proficiency assessment of California and ELMA's goals for the testing for all English learners. Changes to the OUSD budget and how those changes could affect English language learners.

Thank you.

Hi, board. JT Mitzmoshen, a lead delegate for the Parent Student Advisory Committee with Matt Glaser, the other lead lead delegate. The parent student advisory committee met publicly last week to try to understand the ongoing shifts to budget items that will directly impact our local control accountability plan. There was a special focus on action areas under each goal that have the largest total investments, the largest number of positions, and that they'd use a significant amount of supplemental and concentration funding. As details around budget adjustments were still being worked out, we were not given all the details needed to properly assess impact impacts across all of our goals.

However, we were able to center on typical trade offs during this process attempting to see balance between what investments are typically being reduced or eliminated and what is being protected.

Our committee continues to observe a pattern of using the s and c budget without providing a clear rationale for its use. We are eager to learn more about what will need to be moved out of SNC to make room for large investments such as alternative education and small schools, so that we may assess the real impact to the goals and measurable outcomes that have been set for the three years of this LCAP. Finally, we heard multiple comments from committee members and the community expressing a now familiar refrain. More transparency in this process is vital. Without the information needed to actually assess the impact of these coming cuts, we are simply unable to offer the board and district meaningful guidance and partnership.

While time is of the essence and we recognize the need to act quickly to get to basic fiscal solvency, the PSAC urges the board and district leadership to immediately work towards the following two goals. One, tell your community in frank and specific terms what you are trying to achieve by the end of this school year. Two, partner closely with our committee and the other advisory bodies to help develop a framework for true transparent engagement as we rebuild this district and make that plan public as soon as possible. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Are there public comments on the PSAC?

Yes. We have Osalo Lobala.

One minute.

What you have now in place is an opportunity to see the status and the needs of students who are at the level of disability, foster youth, English language learners. You don't have any form of an opportunity to look at the status needs of African American students and we are being left out of the process of accommodating based on learning from sitting down and talking about having some type of representation. You do have something called black thriving community that's non existent. You even have money set aside for that non existent. You have reparations for black students non existent.

So at some point, it is your responsibility to look at what is happening at African American students and staff too because I'm seeing a whole lot of less black teachers in this school district.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers?

No, president. That concludes public speakers.

Thank you. Are there board comments? Director Smith Smith. Sorry.

Yeah. Good evening, everyone. I just wanna urge the second point that PSAC stated, and that's just simply collaborating with the advisory groups. These are the people that are showing up constantly for our students, for our families, and that's something that we all need to work on as a board, as the adult decision makers. So please listen to them, collaborate with them, and listen to what they're saying.

Thank you. Are there any other board director Barry?

Just on that continued thank you. Everything you produce is just so coherent and clear, and I appreciate the work that you all pour in voluntarily to get us the kind of recommendations you present to us every time you're in front of us. So I just another thank you. I do have a question, but I'll email you all.

Thank you. Director Hutchinson.

Yes. Thank you. You know, I I appreciate the the comments from all of the PSAC committees. I'm really asking everyone though to to escalate. You know, as a school board, we were notified by superintendent Sadler on August 15 that we needed to develop a plan to address the budgetary shortfall this year and next year.

We were notified by the county superintendent on September 12. And in that first notification, they told us we needed to do it by October 8. And here we are on February 25, and there's still not an actionable plan coming up for a vote tonight at all. And tonight's literally the deadline because without a plan, there's no way to inform what kind of staffing changes that we need to make. And so what's been put out there is just chaos based on nothing.

And if that decision is not made by March 15, those levels are locked in for next year, which locks in our deficit for next year. I mean, we also received a letter from the county in November that said, first, we needed to have a fiscal solvency plan to address our budgetary shortfall. And then, as a board, we'd have to approve more trade offs in order to negotiate with any of our unions. These were letters that were mailed publicly and discussed here months ago. And for everyone to act like tonight's not the final deadline after passing five months of deadline, it's just inaccurate.

Tonight is the last night and there's not even anything coming up for a vote, which means we're gonna have to be taken over because we can't pass a balanced budget, which means everything in the LCAP is potentially thrown out because the county superintendent's gonna come in and decide, which means the county superintendent's gonna decide what happens in negotiations, but we don't have any money right now anyway, which means we have paid consultants at $400 an hour giving fiscal advice because our chief business officer was forced out. And so tonight's it. Tonight's the deadline. It's game over after tonight. And so as we go through tonight and when we get to the fiscal solvency plan and you see there's not even anything to vote on, I don't know what happens next, but the district has no money and will continue to have no money as long as these changes aren't made.

It's dollars and cents. There's no secret powder gold. And tonight, the timeline runs out. So, hopefully, the PSAT committees are gonna become very active because we're gonna need to fight all over again just to see what we can maintain when we lose local control less than a year after just getting it back. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have the student report. Director Smith?

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being in attendance tonight. We do not have a presentation. I just have one update to let you guys all know that our middle school ethnic studies conference is next Friday, March 6. The middle schoolers have been working super hard on all of these workshops.

It's three different workshops led mostly by middle schoolers, mainly by middle schoolers. They're the ones that collaborate together, come together district wide, and make this ethnic studies conference happen yearly. So please, I hope that you all are able to hear about that. I hope that all of your middle schoolers are signed up. Thank you.

The conference is March 6. Again, it's the Middle School Ethnic Studies Conference, and it's at Mills College.

Are there any public comments?

Yes. We have Sheila Haynes and Asolo Labala.

Okay. One minute each. Can we do, miss Haynes first?

Miss Haynes? Okay. Going to miss Haynes. If you can, mute yourself to speak.

Nothing that is developed in this school district.

We're gonna let miss Haynes go first, if that's okay. She's online. She sometimes has difficulty connecting so we're gonna let her speak and then we'll do it in person.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Oh, I don't know if I can have more than a minute. I thought I was assigned up for pupil discipline because I was just gonna comment that it's critical that our students at the very least get reinforcement of love and respect. I recently learned in regards to the black suspensions that there are no behavior support funding for staff available to support our middle school disabled black students. These are the students who are being suspended at the highest rates and the fact that suspensions continue to occur, learned that because of these supports is showing a real lack of concern that you guys don't have supports available to care for our most vulnerable students. It's like by design our most vulnerable students not only experience racism but unequal treatment, lack of care, concern to their overall well-being.

So I'm asking at the very least to please adopt restorative practice with the ban on hate speech officially. I've been asking for that for over a decade. I know the R word campaign is going around but the N and B words are also causing the most violent in our communities, the most violent. So I'm just worried at the state of the budget and you know racism overall has gotten worse towards blacks since Trump took over and I'm trying not to lose hope but it appears that the district is also adopting the same racial and unjustified practices because our most vulnerable students aren't getting what they need. Everyone should be treated fairly.

I know my time is up, so I'll wait for the next section. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Haynes. Missus Lawton.

Opportunity for a lesson to be learned. When somebody tells you you're not gonna go first or put something in front of you, you always ask why. You don't just accept people putting you in a position of being second, last or whatever. That's a good lesson to learn. Okay?

Why? There's no reason for somebody that's online to be put first because you've had trouble. I've been sitting in this meeting. I've never seen that situation happen. So I just wanna tell you this about your ethnic study conference.

Ethnic studies in this district is on the back of eliminating African American studies. When this district took on ethnic studies, we had a African American studies program in place. Once ethnic studies was adopted, they eliminated African American studies. There should be nothing for African American people that we have to be eliminated in order for something else to exist.

Thank you. Are there board comments on the student report? Director Bachelor.

Thank you. I'd just like to highlight another student event that's coming up, which is on March 1 at Skyline High School. There is the MLK Oratorical finals. And so that's every different grade throughout the whole school district. I was able to go to Carl V.

Monk for theirs, and it's just like a wonderful experience to see our youngest students, take on that amazing work. And so, excited to be at Skyline on, Sunday to be a part of that as well and would love for community members to join that.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is, unfin oh, I'm sorry, doctor Barry. Okay. Next on the agenda is, item, s, which is unfinished business. And S2, the financial stabilization implementation plan, protecting equity, maintaining local control, and prioritizing students.

And I believe Superintendent Sadler is making that presentation. Doctor. Frutas, you're welcome to the next.

One second.

Good evening.

Yes. President Bruhard, vice president Bachelor, and directors, and the members of the Oakland community, good evening. Tonight, we're here to provide you our fourth update on the fiscal stabilization plan. This is not just about the actions we take, but an opportunity for us to demonstrate what local governance looks like when a board and a superintendent work together with integrity, with transparency, and above with the care care in this community. We've been on this journey together since October.

You gave us a mandate and we've honored it. I'm going to quickly go through this presentation. My SLT and HYA leaders, Latonya Kirk Carter and doctor Ruben Frutos are here to respond to your questions. Tonight, you will consider five related items. They belong together.

They are different expressions of the same commitment. This presentation, the fourth progress report on our financial stabilization implementation plan. This is the story of what we've done, what we're doing, and where we're headed. This will recap what we've learned together since January and talk about the actions we recommend for tonight. Structural adjustments to our classified workforce aligned to our enrollment reality.

You will find that resolution twenty five twenty six zero zero eight three, which is a reduction of particular kinds of service, a required legal action that preserves our right to issue notices and protect our timeline. And then, we will look at certificated workforce realignment actions corresponding to the position changes in slide four.

Point of clarification. Where did that last slide just come from? I don't see it in the presentation I'm looking at that was posted online.

Downloaded from online, director Hutchinson.

Okay. So it didn't come in between overview and outcomes and the challenge recap?

No. We just we he skipped ahead. We're okay.

So where did it come from? Because I still didn't don't see that. Is that in our PowerPoint that was posted online?

This is the PowerPoint downloaded from online.

So can we get a clarification of what page this is in the PowerPoint, please? So that one is revenues are are down. K?

That should be, I think, slide three, but the superintendent's not there yet. We just went ahead of her speaking remarks. Superintendent, in your overview?

K. The over the overview that I'm discussing at this point is this presentation, which is our fourth progress report. Then we'll go to the classified reduction in force, specifically, the elimination of certificated positions, certificated reduction in force, and the pars retirement incentive program. Then moving on to side three, we will that we'll look at the challenge that we have when this board adopted twenty five twenty six zero one seven seven a in December, you set a clear direction to address the structural deficit, protect local control, and protect students and do not close schools. Let me tell you what your team delivers tonight.

Specifically, the 65,000,000 in identified actions through a combination of fiscal shifts to restrictive funds, central office reductions, and operational efficiencies already moving us towards structural balance. What was initially scoped at 50,000,000 is now approximately 65,000,000. There are approximately 200 FTE from central office. We started with ourselves. Leadership took cuts first.

Central office absorbed proportionately larger reductions than school sites. 20% versus 10% because that is what care center leadership requires. All 80 plus neighborhood schools remain open. No closures, not one. We presented a qualified budget certification.

We maintained that, and that was accepted by the Alameda County Office of Education. We have moved the trajectory from negative to qualified, and our goal tonight is to stay on that path. And with continued discipline, we are seeking a qualified or better second interim.

I'd doctor Frutos to now go over the numbers.

Can we go over the the financials?

So board members, if you recall, the board had a resolution in December, and it was our responsibility to try our best to, one, meet the 3% required, for economic uncertainties, as well as to address the deficits, not just in the current year, but in each one of the two subsequent years. There were some guidelines within those goals. No school closures, prioritize reductions in central and keep them away as far away from students as possible, enhance efforts to improve student attendance, reduce reliance on one time funds, improve fiscal controls. And I'm going to add one more, and that was the combined effort between the governance team and the and the fiscal team that was to use restricted dollars to the best of our ability. So you've seen this chart before and now we're gonna go into more detail.

As, we summarized before, there are several elements where we felt that we were on track. Some elements were that were pending. And when we presented this chart before, we were still working with our school sites. We had done central office reductions. We had reduced some of the expenditures in some areas, and we were reviewing elements like how to increase attendance and do other things.

So we have for you what the board asked, is a detailed amount of where the shifts and reductions are as of today. Next slide. So to the right, we're gonna start on the right side first. You see a list of items. They're not only categorized by dollars, but they also show the percentage of the total reduction that we have.

Starting with the reductions in 2526, the board recalls that for central office, we reduced 20%, which yielded about 1,900,000. The schools, trying to protect the schools, 10% was about $29,000 for areas in labor, 10% for supplies, materials, and services, which was about 74,000. You begin to see the scope between the two is a little less than a 100,000, where it was 1.9 for central. And then deferred maintenance, which we explained in the prior chart before is on track, a reduction of about $2,000,000, which is a contribution from the general fund. And then we begin to look at shifting funding into more restricted areas.

The first one was central, 20% for supplementary and concentration for labor, about $1,400,000, which is about 2% of the total amount. Central also, 20% supplementary and concentration for supplies, materials, and services, which yielded about $3,000,000. Then for our schools, we had two categories, labor, about 1,400,000. Again, this is a shift, not a reduction. And for supplies and materials, about $72,000.

And then we had other costs that were labor and non labor that we were able to move to supplementary and concentration of about $500,000. And as the board knows, there were some programs that were able to be shifted to more restricted components including alt ed and into supplementary and concentration using carryovers, and that yielded about $10,000,000. Then to restricted attendance clerks and noon supervisors, about 1,400,000 or about 2% of the entire effort, and to discretionary block rent labor and non labor components of about $4,600,000. Then we had a custodial cost transfer of $2,000,000, and the board tonight will be, taking action on the next item. That's why you see it italicized, and this is for central and schools, the FTEs that will be discussed, and those have an impact next year, and that'll reduce about $11,000,000.

Then shifts for next year. We had ongoing shift of noon supervisors for supplementary and concentration, which yields a little over half $1,000,000, ongoing shift of alt ed to supplementary and concentration, about $11,000,000, ongoing shift of small schools to supplementary and concentration, about $9,000,000 or about almost 14% of our efforts, and then labor and nine day cost to one of our resources, which yields a little less than $5,000,000. And there are items that are to be determined. One of the things the board asked is keep us appraised of any upcoming items. Well, parts will be a savings, but we will not know what the exact savings is until next year when we see what the differential in reductions is.

Also, grant FTEs. As you know, when a grand sunsets, if we if we keep the FTE, that's a cost to the general fund the subsequent year. So we will bring more information on that. And finally, the board asked when can we get actual information that can serve as a base for future financial reports. And we're getting close to that time when we do second interim and when we finish the year with all our procurement and contracting, at which point we will bring balances to the board and update these numbers.

But at this point, I can tell you what first started at 54,000,000, then we had an estimate of 64,000,000. I can tell you now with a degree of certainty, because we've gone back to the financial system to review this, that we are a little bit over $65,000,000, and we expect to come back to you at a future meeting or staff to provide information regarding the areas that I just mentioned that are still outstanding.

Next slide, please.

So for the certification status in December, the board expected a negative certification. That was the conversation. By March, we expect a qualified certification. By March, it was the expectation of a qualified certification. In December, we received a qualified certification and the board adopted as qualified and ACOE accepted it as qualified.

In March, which means second interim report, we expect a qualified certification or better based on the information we presently have. So we presented this chart to you before. These are the timelines that include budget development priorities. I'll just mention a couple that are upcoming. As the board knows, today you take actions in the reduction in force.

By March, we will have the second interim report that has to be board approved and the reduction notices. In May, we will have more information regarding the governor's budget revise, and we will able to begin budget development and LCAP development, which the board will approve. And then finally, by June, there'll be the public hearing and board adoption of both the local control plan as well as the budget before the June. One of the things that, the board had directed our team and the district team is to work on a very, phased approach to what we're doing to stabilize our budget. So the first was to immediately stabilize, and the main thing that we did is did some reductions to the budget, but mainly the shifts that have been so far working not only to reduce restricted balances, but to stabilize the general, portion of our budget.

The next one is the workforce realignment that included the pars retirement incentive, the reductions in force, and the realignments that the board has been guiding us through and approving the pars process to begin, and and then it'll be approved for implementation. And finally, we are going to have two more things that are important this year. One is budget adoption. We will be working with our financial team and with the board to develop a budget for next year and the subsequent two years, and that also includes sustainability. It is not only important to have a budget that's balanced, but that also is sustained into the future.

So the last element is that we implement recommendations to have, an operational budget that can carry us for years into the future in solvency. And that concludes our presentation. If there are questions, we're happy to entertain them.

Thank you.

Thank you. Are there, public comments on the presentation?

Yes. We have 24 registered speakers and we have four indicate that they are students.

Let's take the students first, one minute each, and we'll have the first 10.

First 10, noted. First for our students, Elysium L, Meleha K, Meleha Cleveland, Ashley Vega, Kim Ayers, Keela Ochawa, Jonathan Mates Munchen, David Chow, and Sheila Haynes. The tenth speaker is Kim Davis. Those are first 10 speakers.

One minute each.

Hello. My name's Ella Sam. I wanted or I am a sixth grade student from Un Frick United. I wanted to speak for student or other students like me because I want to talk for students like I I'm sorry. In third grade, there was this one issue where I had suicidal thoughts, So I thought that third graders, other kids like me, might have suicidal thoughts.

And if counselors or if the budget gets cut, counselors will also might get fired or they might have to quit because their jobs are not gonna pay them good enough. And then the students will not have counselors, and then they can't talk to them to express how they're feeling. And then that can either lead to them keep thinking about it, or they might carry out those suicidal thoughts. And, also, if you take away counselors from us, bad things can happen, more fights can happen, kids can't express how they feel. And I deserve a teacher who is happy and can pay bills, taxes, and I think some teachers have double jobs to pay their rent and taxes.

Also, the extra classes are good for students because we need fun classes because it helps us find out what we want to do with our lives, and also it would help, other kids find jobs that are good and suited

for them.

So please don't take this away from us.

Thank you. Alright. Next speaker.

Hi, I'm a siskaya Skinnen from Frick United. I believe it's important that we have a school nurse. If you have any concerns about our bodies or injuries, then we need a nurse to check-in with. We're growing middle school. You can't take people that are really important to us.

Without teachers, we cannot learn. And a bigger classroom with with kids will mean we'll get less help. Then the teachers will stress out and quit or have to take many days off. The most important to me is counselors because they're like therapists and a lot of students like me have problems and get stressed out. If we don't have enough counseling, then we'll have nobody to count on when things are bad.

I think fun classes like art are really important, and if we don't have that, then we'll not have any opening for creativity. If we take our art, drama, and other classes away, it will not help our minds to grow. Please do not vote for this budget to pass.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hi. My name is Malaya, and I'm an eighth graders an eighth grade student at Frick United. I am worried about how teachers will be able to help every single student if our classes are bigger next year. If they're bigger if they're any bigger, it would be harder for teachers to go around and help every single one of us. I think it's important to have extra classes such as art or leadership that help us to express ourself.

Some of these elective classes will help us learn to cope with stress and grow and learn new skills. Most of our extra classes will be gone next year if you vote to pass this budget. Without more counselors counselors who will we have to talk who will we be able to talk to that we can trust? Without a school nurse, how will we be able able how will we have anyone to help us when we are hurt or feeling or not feeling well or need advice? Please do not vote to make these cuts to our school or any other school in the district if you truly want us to thrive.

Thank you. Next speaker please. Is

wait. Can I put this on my desk? Hello? Is that good? Okay.

Okay. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Ashley. I'm an eighth grade student at Frick United.

I believe that right now there are too many students in each classroom and it would be better for everybody's education if there were far fewer students in the classes. Classrooms should be 24 students at the very most, but better if it was smaller. I feel like it's really important for us to take some fun classes so we can express ourselves and show our personalities. Like art, language, leadership, and drama, all of those classes makes learning fun. Nothing is wrong with making learning fun.

Teachers should be paid more because they are very supportive of the students. Sometimes students have outbursts, and on top of teaching, teachers also have to deal with that. Personally, I think without a counselor, how are we going to express ourselves with nobody to talk to? So in other words, please do not pass the budget where you take away a lot of our teachers, our counselors, and nurse in creative classes. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That concludes the student speakers.

Madam president, there is a online speaker. It's Kim Ayers. His name was called. Allow them to speak.

Kim Davis, go ahead. Kim Ayers. Hi.

This is Kim Ayers. Under board bylaw 9,000, this board has three core jobs, Set strategy, oversee the budget, and supervise the superintendent. As an OUSD parent, I am devastated that you are failing on all three, and I'm heartbroken by the testimonies we are hearing from our students and our community. On strategy, we have no definition of a high quality school and no path to provide them. What is your vision for OUSD?

How are we going to get there? We continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, and now we're cutting positions like elective teachers, nurses, and counselors. On budget, you have set off a death spiral. Top talent is fleeing OUSD. Families are looking outside district run schools, and each employee is asked to do more.

Shifting equity funds and cutting school sites by 10% isn't structural change. It's a slow motion dismantling and starvation of our schools. When you fail to make tough structural choices, everybody loses. On the superintendent, you fired Kyla Johnson Trammell when we needed her most. We had a tenured superintendent with the courage to lead the restructuring this district requires.

You removed her with no explanation, micromanaged the senior leadership team. And while I hope super superintendent Sadler is successful, you have set her up to fail. The saddest part is I don't even know what to ask for or hope for at this point. We've run out of time, and our most vulnerable students are bearing the cost of your lack of leadership and decisions. Three of your seats are up for election reelection this November, and we will be looking for leaders who are willing to really do this job.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Yes. Next 10 speakers. Next 10 speakers are

Good

evening. My name is David Chow. I'm a One

second. He's gonna call out the next speaker. I wanna give you your full minute. Alright. Go ahead.

Next 10 speakers are Rebecca Reisman, Asada Olugbala, Matt Glaser, Kate Mahaney, Jill Habig, Ella Everworth, Claire Green, Jorge Jorge, last name starts with p, Carrie Kaufman, and Swacha, last name starts with a c.

And those will be our final speakers. What we'll do is hold the other speakers for the public comment. That's okay.

Okay. Point of point of clarification, they signed up to speak on a specific item. The item's gonna be addressed, you're saying they have to wait until speak until afterwards?

We're moving on tonight because we're gonna go talk with the other we're gonna have the

other talk. That's But they have a right, especially especially since you stated at the start. They have a right to speak on it once the item comes before we take action on it.

When we come to that, when we come to

the final meeting. Point of clarification? Wait. You're excused. Can we get a point of clarification then from the parliamentarian?

Because you said at the start there'd be 24 speakers. You can't then push them off until after the item is addressed. The community and the public always has a right to address an item before it is addressed by the board if it is put on the agenda. That's why typically take

we'll cut your comment and take the comment from the parliamentarian. Can we have a ruling from the parliamentarian?

Under the board's adopted bylaws, the agenda order as published and as noticed says that under this business item, for each individual item that's on the agenda, you have a maximum of ten minutes of public speaking. The suggestion in this particular instance, as I heard from the president of the board, is to call certain speakers up to the time allotted. Then if we're going to get through tonight's agenda, the suggestion is that others who have not spoken indicate their support or opposition to the agenda item by raising their hand. And that gives the board an idea of what the public thinks about the proposal that is before the board.

Thank you, mister Riekstra. We'll take the next 10 speakers. These will be the final 10 speakers, and and then we will take the straw vote at the end.

Thank you.

So I'd like to move then that we extend public comment on this item to allow everyone who took this time to sign up on speak on what should be a $100,000,000 package, and I see that there's still cards in the box, that we allow everyone, they're limited one minute, we should really allow everyone two minutes. So I would like to move that we allow everyone who signed up to speak on this item the opportunity to speak on it.

As we discussed tonight, we have

I second that.

On the agenda. We'll vote on this. But I wanna make sure that people understand. I wanna hear from everybody on

the It

was Excuse me.

I have the floor right now. It was seconded. No.

I have the floor. Thank you. We have on the agenda item tonight. The the rifts. They, lost the thank you.

Reduction force. I want to be able to give the community, many of whom are affected by these, the opportunity. To get here their voices as well. So again, we have excuse me. I have the floor.

We also have our L cap, which is again something that we've talked about with PSAC has talked about, so we have many items tonight that again are of great concern to our community, and I want to make sure that everybody has a chance, particularly people who are affected by the reduction in force. We have heard from our communities. And for many of the meetings that we've gone to, and I want to give people the chance to speak in public on that, so we will now take a vote to

extend excuse We end until will eleven now forty five to let them speak

on all of those.

Thank you. Thank Comment. We have a first director Hutchinson and we have a second director Thompson. Can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

As I understand, the motion is the motion is to allow all persons who have signed up on this the present agenda item that's before the board to to speak. On the roll call, student director Simmons is absent. Student director, Smith.

Yes.

K. Director Lauder. No. Director Williams is absent. Director Hutchinson?

Yes. Yes.

Alright. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Thompson?

Yes.

Vice president Bachelor? No. President Bruhart? No. The motion does not agree to.

The ten minute rule is in effect.

Thank you. We'll have the

next speakers. President Bruhart, we do have a medical does anyone have an EpiPen? EpiPen. Anybody have an EpiPen, please?

Or does Mario have one upstairs?

I think the nurse just went to go get one. Thank you. Okay. Go ahead, mister Chan. Thank you.

I'm from I'm the last of the first group. My name is David Chow. I'm a parent and a member of the board at Sequoia Elementary parent teacher organization. I've heard it's the contractors, 125,000,000 a year in outside agreements. I've heard it's attendance.

Every empty seat is lost revenue. I've heard it's facilities. We're maintaining buildings for schools that are half enrolled. I've heard it's central office, 33 administrators when San Diego runs a bigger district with 25. I've heard its expiring grants that we built permanent staffing on top of.

It's probably all of it, every single one. And here's what I don't understand. Why are we acting like this is a surprise? These aren't new problems. Every one of them has been on a slide deck at a board meeting for the past year, maybe the past few years.

Any functional organization facing a crisis like this would do a little bit of everything. Trim contracts, consolidate facilities, right size administration, and protect the people closest to the students, and have been doing that a little bit of everything all along. That's how complex systems work. Instead, we're here at the twilight of our budget approval window voting on whether to gut school level staff while apparently no one can tell me the plan for the rest of it. Who's going to do the actual work of restructuring this district?

Because this board has had a year, and we're still in triage mode. Thank you.

Thanks, Megan.

Hi. I'm Rebecca Reisman, parent of a freshman at Skyline High School. Oakland Unified receives higher per pupil funding compared to many other California districts, but we seem to be constantly in a financial crisis. We have declining enrollment due to many reasons, including continued lack of investment in our students and school sites. We have a richly diverse district with many committed teachers, and I would really like to see OUSD thrive.

And I truly think we can do much better as a district. This means getting a better handle on the budget once and for all in a way that serves all our students well. We can't cut any more student centered resources that'll just result in even more students leaving OUSD. My plea to the board is please, please productively work together on behalf of our kids. Get a mediator if you need to.

Just please work on behalf of our kids and solve these issues. Thank you.

As someone who has become deeply involved in conversations with several of you and as a parent who sees a great need for change in this district, I'm gonna say something to you and the community at large that will make me sound crazy. This is progress. The harm that has been done to this district and community stretches back at least two decades. These layoffs are a heartbreaking thing for all of us, but they are progress because they start the real difficult process of undoing that harm, and this process will take years. What comes next isn't known, and our PSAC report makes clear that the district's messaging strategy has been opaque, confusing, and has harmed our trust in you.

Nonetheless, one fact remains clear, we must maintain local control of the district and oversight of our budget to give the district a chance to create a true process for engagement. That engagement must happen over reasonable time periods, with the goal of building this district into a community based example others should follow. To our community, I need to say this. We are a public school district. The people up on that stage are there because our community voted them there.

To end this cycle of harm, we need to trust that the people of Oakland know what's best for our kids. The people of Oakland, not the people of Alameda County or the state of California. This is a mess that we share with them, and it'll only get cleaned up by us. For all of you, you know what's at stake. A rejection of these cuts is an acceptance that you aren't up to the task.

For many years, this district and board has been pilloried for putting off hard decisions. Well, are the hard decisions they were talking about. Let's end the cycle and change the narrative. Thank you.

Hi, thank you. My name is Kate Mahoney. I'm a parent of two students at Peralta Elementary, a second grader and a TKR. I wanna urge the board not to adopt the proposed staffing reductions as drafted and instead prioritize maintaining school site roles. At our school, the proposed cuts include our teacher on special assignment and our community schools manager, which are being cut at school sites across the district.

It cannot be overstated how essential these roles are to school success. They ensure classroom continuity for students. They support teacher development, which in turn improves retention and enrollment, and they contribute to a safe and peaceful environment for our children in many classrooms that are already too large. Without these roles, our most vulnerable students at Peralta and across the district are going to be left behind, and gains that we have achieved under their leadership will be lost. I realize how some staffing reduction is necessary.

I agree with mister Glazer, but the board should revisit the proposed reductions and prioritize maintaining student facing roles like TOSAs and CSMs. Thank you.

Hi, Jill Hobbig, parent of a Kaiser TK student. I agree we need to do three things. Cut our total costs, pay our teachers more, and serve our students better. The question is how to do it. Appendix B and D of the fiscal stabilization plan proposes to close underutilized spaces within current schools, and to consolidate TK into two to three regional hubs, rather than operating small, under enrolled sections across the district.

Those two changes would save $3,000,000 by saving utility, maintenance, custodial, and other costs, and would improve program quality by sharing staff and strengthening support systems. If that's true, and I believe it is, then it must also be true that reducing our total footprint of schools would save even more money, and help strengthen program quality by not spreading our resources so thin, and cutting each of our school sites to the bone in the name of saving buildings. I urge the board to choose people over I love OUSD, not because of the building my child enters every day, but because of the people who are there. We must restructure this district to have fewer schools that are fully enrolled, fully resourced, and with fully compensated teachers. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Ella Evrie Wortman. I am honored to be here to represent Frick's staff and community and stand with, my incredible students. I'm here to deliver petitions from our staff and from our parents, urging you to vote no to any cuts to school sites. I see the courageous, intelligent individuals that my students are, and I also see the dedicated, caring, and competent staff standing behind them who work tirelessly to meet their needs, deliver excellent instruction, and foster their brilliance.

10% cuts does not mean just 10%. It is devastating to Frick and will dismantle the joyous, supportive school community that we love. We stand to lose nine dedicated beloved faculty next year with these cuts, and an additional eight face reduction in positions. This significantly impacts the educational experience of our students. We have built a true community school at Frick, and we need every single one of those staff members to help our students thrive.

Good evening, board. My name is Carrie Kaufman. I am the president of the United Administrators of Oakland Schools. Tonight is the first night that we see these cuts publicly presented. This is the first night.

It is also the night you guys are being asked to vote on them. That alone should concern everyone here. The information being provided tonight is deeply troubling. I am once again asking, what is the vision for this district under these reductions? What is the plan for how we will actually get the work done?

Where has stakeholder engagement been? These cuts have have been made top down without true meaningful engagement by UAOS or any other stakeholders here. Right now, this does not feel strategic. It feels reactive. It feels an attempt to preserve local control at any cost without fully understanding the operational consequences of these decisions.

I've reviewed the list of these reductions and spoken to impacted members. The list contains inaccuracies. Employees have been told by senior leaders that there are errors. How can anyone trust a process? How can employees feel secure when their position appears and disappears depending on the week?

This is not stability. This is chaos. We need a real plan. We need accurate information, and we need leadership that restores confidence, not intensifies uncertainty. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Sui Chit Chenduri. I'm the principal of Joaquin Miller. But tonight, I'm speaking on behalf of principals, a group largely left out of the conversation of running schools under these budget cuts even though we are the very people who will be responsible for holding together the schools left standing afterward. Years ago, I had to write a paper answering the question, what is the purpose of school?

My answer was simple, to give choice to everyone, to create opportunity for everyone, to open doors that would otherwise remain closed for everyone. So I'll ask you, what do you believe the purpose of school is? If your answer, as I suspect it is, is to provide rigorous high quality education to each and every child, then you know this proposal does not do that. It does the opposite. This budget makes a moral decision.

It says some. Some students will thrive. Some will be left with less. And let's be honest about what that means. The students with less will not be random.

Educators are emotionally exploited constantly and told to just do it for the kids, and we do. We do this work because we believe in it, but belief does not replace resources. There is a limit to what love can compensate for. Are we fighting for equitable outcomes, or are we managing decline? Survival is not the purpose of school.

Equity is. Opportunity is. Excellence is. Oakland has the potential to lead with courage. Please do not ask us to lead schools stripped to the point where we cannot fulfill the very purpose we claim to stand for.

This is not resistance to change. This is resistance to inequity. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Claire Green, and

I have coached teachers at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience for the past five years. In my time serving the students of Oakland Unified as the wider district, excuse me, has moved from crisis to crisis, including last year's bizarre and stunted attempt to float the idea of merging Life Academy with United for Success without demonstrating any evidence of research supporting the decision or sharing any semblance of a process with either community, I am often left asking myself about this district's administration. Where are the adults? The city of Oakland has entrusted this leadership with our most precious resource, our children and their futures. The teachers and students of Oakland Unified deserve better.

We deserve to interact with professional leadership acting in good faith. What we've learned from the fact finding committee in the OEA's contract negotiation process is that this district is capable of finding the money to prioritize a student centered budget. We are capable of preserving the resources that our students with the highest needs depend on. When I coach my teachers, I often talk about respectful work. Work that is respectful of their students' time and capacity as brilliant young people with places to go and things to learn.

All we're asking is for y'all to show up with respectful work. Please vote no to a plan that is disrespectful of the work we show up with every day.

Hello, board members. My name is Jorge. I am an ethnic studies teacher over at Oakland High School, and I'm here to express my concern about any potential cuts you will create for sites like mine in order to balance the budget. Our students deserve the world. They deserve to have high quality, equitable education.

They deserve a safe and stable learning environment. However, if you vote for a budget that is on the table, one that creates job cuts, you are creating unstable learning environments. By cutting funding to school sites, you are taking away the high quality education of our students. Instead, ought to support a student centered budget. Give students and staff this compensation they deserve.

We want teachers to stay in Oakland. What will keep teachers in Oakland is if you pay them a living wage. What will force them out of Oakland, will be, forcing them to struggle day to day paying for rents or their living conditions. Last week, OEA members overwhelmingly voted to go on strike if we need to. To be clear, we do not want to go on strike.

We want to be in our classrooms. But if you continue to pedal around that we need to cut these funding at our school sites, then you leave us with no choice. So if you do not want us to strike, vote for a student centered budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

And are there board comments on this item? Director Barry? Mhmm.

So first, thank you everyone for public comments so far, and I know we still have quite a ways to go on this particular item. I feel torn, And I've been pretty direct and transparent with everyone about this and over the last few weeks, because I don't feel like today I have sufficient information to rigorously assess the plan. And I heard a comment, I just caught the tail end of your comment, where you said if a a vote for no is a signal that we're not up for the task. And I just wanted to say that I am here for the tough decisions, and I'm here for the tough conversations. And I also believe that tough decisions can be strategic, and that my responsibility as a board member is to be strategic and to have the information I need, to ask questions, get information, share with community so I can make an assessment and an informed vote.

I know that you all have put a lot of work into this, and so that is not to to dismiss the work at all. But I know that a reduction in force of this size and scale does merit some of the answers to the questions that I've been raising week after week after week. I've asked us to be transparent about the reductions we've made in each of the individual strategies. We got that information tonight line by line. We know how much progress we've made to re make reductions in each of those strategies.

So now we're at 65,000,000. So thank you so much for responding to that question. I've asked about compliance to make sure that implementing this plan doesn't create exposure, doesn't lead to new audit findings. I've asked us for the vision behind these cuts, not just so that we can begin to understand the impact, but also so that we can understand what the thinking is for how we're defining or redefining what the base might be, what we're considering to be the essential programs, and services that we'll offer the district. And I've asked for that in part two because impact is important.

Clearly, a reduction in force of this scale and size will lead to significant and material changes. There will be services that we cannot provide, and I wanna understand how we will fill those gaps. Are we going to absorb some of those services into other functions and roles? Are we gonna stop those programs and services? And in fact, some of these questions our community deserves because I believe that a vision will help them understand not just what they're losing, but what we're building if in fact that is what's happening here.

I've also asked us to for information to help me understand how the cuts today help us address the structural deficit

we still have.

How much of these changes will be the changes we will continue to execute or live through in the in future years. Hopefully, I will have more time to to say more, but I'll stop there for now since I'm out of time.

Thank you. Any other board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Thank thank you. So one of the things I want everyone to notice is we went right into board comments without a director needing to make a motion. Because there is no motion on the floor because there's no action to be taken here. There's nothing to vote on. There's no plan.

And for people who've been around for a minute, these are what our budget documents used to look like before Lisa Grant Dawson came to our district. When people like Vernon Howe or other paid consultants or or other people came through and did this kind of work. But there's no plan here at all. So we need to remember, on September 12, Alameda County superintendent Castro sent the school board a letter notifying us that we had received conditional approval of our budget for this school year. And because of it, by October 8, the board was supposed to approve a board resolution that outlines the timeline and plan to implement budget balancing solutions that address any budgetary shortfall in '25, '26, and 2627.

We received that letter from county superintendent Castro on September 12. Said we were supposed to do that by October 8. On October 8, this board didn't take action to satisfy this letter and instead approved scenarios. Then in December, the board approved more scenarios, and superintendent Sadler at the time said, a scenario is not a plan. Two days later, this chief business officer was forced out of the district.

A month after that, we hired consultants, and here we are today on the last day we can make staffing changes for next year. And there's still not a plan to address the budgetary shortfall. And for those who don't know what a plan looks like, all you have to do is look at the work we did the last three years in budget development, attachment a, b, and c, respectively, each year. This is a repeatable process that we've done every year. And here we are in the last day.

And on Sunday, all of a sudden, there's 200 more layoff notices that appear. The reason why nobody heard about them is because nobody knew about them because there was no process and nothing was ever decided. There was no strategy to eliminate TSAs from every school. There was no strategy approved to cut middle school electives in half. So we have a school board that's refused to do their job to make sure there was a plan, and we have a superintendent who was still not able to produce a plan for us.

So there's nothing to vote on here. Game over. Nothing to vote on. And because of that, I'll never vote on layoff notices that are generated at a thin blue air rather than thin blue sky. Because if we would have done this work, we would have developed a list of strategies.

One of them might have been staff reduction. The board would have approved it, then one pagers would have gone out, and they'd all be costed out, and we'd know we could address our deficit. None of that happened. We ain't seen nothing like this. This is even worse than Vernon Howe was here.

So please don't be fooled. There's no plan being voted on, no fiscal solvency plan, game over, everyone has failed. Thank you.

Are there any other comments? Director Thompson? Director Lauter?

Yeah. I actually want to take a minute to, I think, acknowledge the thing that I've been hearing the most in the community that we've heard repeated tonight, which is that there is one thing that has been different about this budget cycle, I think, has been that there has been less communication than typically we are used to in Oakland. And I, you know, I I think I will just say that the presentation tonight, and to director Barry's point, laying out the specific and you know, kind of tangible reductions and shifts that we've done to stabilize our district is very, helpful and good progress. I do think that we have to acknowledge though that we don't know yet. We haven't presented a plan to tell people what school is gonna look like in August.

What are the things that we are going to do to serve our students differently, to fill the gaps that we, you know, we ultimately cannot afford any longer. And so I just want to, for the rest of my time, Doctor. Sadler, I know you've referenced this as being part of a multi year plan. I wonder if you could share a little bit about what you're thinking the next steps will be for engaging community and stakeholders as we develop our budget through June 30.

Director Lotta, I would like to acknowledge that at this point, what we needed to do was, first of all, we had a major deficit that need to be addressed before we could even plan for next year. We have specific processes that require that staff are involved in those discussions. We looked at our current deficit. This is why I asked for mid year cuts, to first look at our, vacancies. First, look at what we could do at staff site.

We have a had a $100,000,000 deficit, which meant that without closing that deficit before next year's budget, we would not been able to submit a budget that would be approved by the county. So we had to make decisions early on so that we'd be prepared to organize in the next phase, which is a total reorganization of the district, looking at best practices, looking at what we could afford with the amount of schools that we had, with the amount of staff that we have, and certainly with the projected students that we have. The board was very clear that they did not wanna close school in next year. And so my direction was to make a $100,000,000 worth of cuts so that we could sustain the district moving forward. So I looked at that and and made it absolutely clear that we needed to look at the reductions as a primary goal, but also thinking about what the priorities would be at schools specifically.

We we did not have the funds to do all these things that we were able to do this year. And why? Because many of the positions that are held that people are appreciating were one time we're done with one time funds that we received post COVID. And everybody needs to be real about that, and those funds are have already sunsetted and will not be available in the fall. We also had to look at the number of students we were projected to have, and we do have declining enrollment.

So we have the same number of schools, actually the same number of schools that they had when I started in this district. There were 54,000 students. We now have 34,000 students, and we have the same number of schools. That's something that is, you know, there's there are costs. And so at this point, we are the next step and you've noticed that I discussed the phases.

The first phase was just to look deal with the finances and get real numbers. The second phase was to make a plan for next year in terms of making sure that we had the funds to pay the people that we have on staff. And with our current situation, we would not have the funds to pay a current staff next year if we maintain every single staff person. Where budget would not have been accepted that we have, And we needed to, first of all, stop the bleeding, figure out where we are, and then work diligent diligently to make decisions about our priorities for next year. So the next phase is to reorganize the district to support quality schools.

And that's something that I'm very committed to, something that I've been talking about. I look at our attendance on a daily basis. I look at our grades. I look at what's happening at all of our sites. I visit a majority of our sites on a regular basis quite off quite often.

That's the work. So I have to be really honest with this community. I was born and raised here. I've had every single job as a teacher, special ed teacher, principal, area superintendent, and I understand what is going on at our sites. And I want every student to have the opportunity that they deserve.

But we've got to reorganize based on the amount of money that we receive from the state and federal government. And right now, it is not an there's not enough money that we're going to be receiving to maintain our current staff. That's the real deal. To maintain the current buildings that we have and pay the utilities and everything else. That's the real deal.

So the real issue, I think, is that we need to work with our state and federal governments to really fund schools at the level that they should be to do all the things that we think are important for our students and families. And that's something I'm committed to doing with our unions, with our community together to really speak to that. We shouldn't have to be in the situation where we have to prioritize, class size, retirement, pay, benefits over, the outcomes that we want for our students. We shouldn't be having these discussions. We should be talking today about our celebrations of learning in the schools, our successes.

That's what we should be talking about. So I want everybody to know this is a very difficult moment and it's something that is a very difficult time because I see people on the list. I've been here a long time and I know a lot of the people who are affected by the cuts. And I want everybody to understand, anybody in here who is concerned about this situation and spoke tonight, I want you to be a part of helping us look at where should we make all those cuts. And we've made a lot of cuts.

I personally make cuts in our central office. And we're at the point now where our central office is so small that it is gonna take longer to reconcile payroll. We have to audit every single public dollar that we receive. There are lots of requirements that a lot of people don't see that goes with every single dollar. So things that we have at the school site, I see great working done work that's being done by our staff.

Everybody's job is important. I've been visited buildings and grounds. I've visit visited food service. I've been there when they prepared their lunches and breakfasts. All those workers are important.

I've watched teachers teach. I've watched principals principal. And as I I've said, I've had every single one of those jobs, and I know how important they are. This is a very difficult moment for this community. And it's been difficult for me to speak about it cause it is very emotional.

There are real people involved. But there are decisions that we're gonna have to make together and we shouldn't be at the point where we have to identify what's gonna stay and what's gonna go. And we do want quality for every single student. I weep when I look at some of the students who aren't making it. I know specifically how many students right now in secondary school have d's and f's.

I know where our students are in terms of attendance, and I know what a a quality education can do. I know what education can do for family and generations. So this is a harsh moment for this community. But just like your personal budgets, all of us have to make decisions every day and prioritize every day what we do to meet our goals, to get to work, to support our families. And we're having to do the same thing and it's harsh to have to make decisions about things that you know are we even working.

And we have to work with our government that makes decisions that when you use resources on the federal level and you do better, then those resources go away. That concept needs to stop. So in response to your question, this is a moment it is a harsh moment for this board to make a decision to send notices to people that we value, that we're concerned, that are doing good work in service of our students. But I'll tell you this, if we don't make some decisions related to our budget tonight, we won't be able to pay everybody that's on the payroll right now in the fall. We don't have the money in the budget for next year.

So I just wanna respond by saying, I am committed to reorganizing, doing the the work that needs to be done, and I wanna do that with the community. I wanna make sure that every child it shouldn't be the luck of the draw of what school they happen to go to or luck of the draw or what program they're in. I worked in special ed. I've worked in every single level. I've also, even in the summers, worked in the prison system, and I I also know the consequence of people not having good resources.

So, yes, I'm willing to work day and night with this community to go on to the next phase, which is the reorganization to work within the budget we have and then advocate for more monies to do all the good work that we've been doing and even get better at it. But we gotta we gotta stop the bleeding. We gotta stop the bleeding before we can even go on to the next step. That's how serious this is. It is an emergency.

And I wish I had more time. I didn't start this job until July 1. I would have liked to have a lot more time because I think about it day and night. What I'd like to see for anybody who knows me knows how committed I am. I'm committed to all of our people who do great work, our custodians, our buildings and grounds, our teachers, our principals, our support staff are all critical to the work.

And I feel teachers provide the program and everybody supports that program. We need to support all of us. But we can't do it if we don't have the money to even begin or continue with the process. So I I have a lot to say about this, and I have hopes and dreams, and I'm not giving up. I'm not giving up, but it's something that is hard.

It's just like your personal budget. You can't do everything that you wanna do all the time, but you can make a better plan to figure out the next steps. And that's where we are, is we gotta stop what we're doing now so that we can do the go to the next steps. We have to retrofit this district. We've had I always talk about this.

It's like having we've had an earthquake. We have to retrofit this district so we can build back even better. But we gotta figure out what's going wrong, what's going well, come together, and make plans to go forward. And I'm about that and I've I've have lots of ideas and we'll be working on that next phase. But we've got right now, unfortunately, the way the statute is, we are required even without knowing what our enrollment is gonna be, even without knowing what our budget is gonna be for next year in terms of monies we received from the state.

We have to make a plan. And by being unfair by letting not letting people know that that we cannot pay them or that we don't have a position for them is unfair. And I think people would be very upset if we said, okay, we're not sending notices. Work till the end of this year. Show up next year.

Oh, we don't have the money for this program, or we don't have the money for that program. So this is what this is about, is that making some clear decisions now so that we can work together to design the district that we can continue to be proud of. And there's lots of good examples of good work that we're doing, but we gotta figure out how we can pay for it.

Thank you, superintendent Sadler. Are there any other board comments? Okay. With that, we will move on to item s three, which is the notice of layoff classified employees reduction in force, school year twenty twenty six twenty seven. This is the talent human resources department.

I don't know if you have

I I would like to make a motion to approve, with the amendment listed on s five twenty six dash zero four five seven. Is there a second?

I'll second it.

Thank you. A staff is getting it up on the screen. I have some slight amendments to my own language if it could be added to the screen. If if and when folks see it, the red is what's listed and available in the board packet, in the board documents. What is in blue is the slight adjusted language that I have for this evening per legal counsel review.

And, again, reading into the record, now therefore it be resolved provided that the district meets its general fund reserve requirement per statute and board policy. If new or ongoing funds are identified subsequent subsequent to the district's second interim report, the board directs the superintendent to alert this the board of education and bring forth recommendations regarding the use of such funds that are consistent with board policies, feasibility, and which prioritize restoration of student facing employee positions that support attendance, safety, and academics who are subject to layoffs effective 2627 school year. This amendment I submitted, as I've been having conversations with school sites and communities, there have been a real call for specific positions, specific people, specific strategies. And, again, I as superintendent said, I want to be able to fund all of the things that we are used to at our school sites. That is not where we are at this moment.

That does not mean that when state funds become available, when the budget is finalized, that and when we do the work that we need to to make the adjustments to our budget, that we won't have funds that are then available to us. And so in response to director Barry and others who have mentioned what is our vision, what is what are the strategies that we wanna employ when it comes to bringing folks back and or maintaining positions. What I have been hearing from my board colleagues and what I feel is really important is folks that support our attendance. Again, that is how we are funded fundamentally. And so we need to make sure that folks that are supporting that work and to me, that's, you know, the folks at the central Enrollment.

Enrollment in no. The main office of our school sites. That is the TSAs and attendance specialists. Thank you. The TSAs, CSMs, and, our nutrition services folks.

Because, again, if you are fed, you are more likely to come school. If you are cared for, you are more likely to come to school. Our family engagement specialists, when it comes to safety again, like I want to give a shout out to our culture keepers. They're here in the front of the room. They're also throughout.

But again, those folks and others provide real safety at our school sites. And, of course, and ultimately, foundationally, we need to support the academics of our students. So making sure that that is also a cornerstone when it comes to any folks that we can bring back that are gonna be supportive of the academics and social emotional learning of our students. So again, I I was hesitant to put positions because I wanna be really clear. Like, we don't know how much is going to be available, available, so so we we don't don't wanna tie our hands and say that we are bringing back folks when we do not have the resources to bring them back.

But I do wanna make sure that we have specific strategies that we are looking at and that we are articulating those strategies to the superintendent so she can make the recommendations to us as a board. Again, those will be coming back to us as a board. We can then make this have a discussion, have further clarification, further direction, and then we'll be able to vote on them coming back. With that being said, I will turn it back to you, president Burhard.

Thank do we have public comment on this item?

Yes, we do, President Bruhard. We have 11 speakers.

11 speakers. I have fifteen minutes for comments on this, so we'll give a minute each, please.

A minute each? Noted. Okay. First five speakers are Asolo Labalan, Benjamin Kukuzhievik, Jill Habig, Michelle Jeddah, Christian Weir. Those are the first five speakers.

Your name was called. Do you want to approach the dais? Thanks.

Comment and a couple of questions. The comment is just it's worth noting that many of the specific positions that have been listed up tonight, things like middle school electives, case managers, counselors are not actually funded in one time COVID funds. They are in ongoing supplemental funds that have been repurposed for next year. And so my question is what is a bigger priority than those positions that has been set aside in order to cut those positions? The two questions I have are, of the $65,000,000 in reductions that you're laying out today, how much of those reductions are actually in the unrestricted budget and will help reduce the general fund deficit?

And the second question is what additional cuts does the board need to make and by when in order to fully eliminate our structural deficit and have enough money to give teachers the raises that they deserve. Thank you.

Hi.

My name is Michelle Jeter.

I am the president of Ask Me. First, I wanna say to the board and to the superintendent, we would like to give her more time to do what she needs to do to fix the school district. She came in at a hard time, and she's really hitting the ground going, listening, and trying to fix it. So that is our ask for that. As far as the cuts, we understand cuts need to be made, but we ask that you look at what needs to be made.

Don't have someone tell you what needs to be done. We have a bunch of things in food service where they're making cuts, but you have new people here. We have a new director. You're paying him a lot of money to be here. But we have a director.

You guys hired one, the vendor. Then you now you have Joseph. Those are two new high paying people in food service, but you're making cuts to little people. You're making cuts to the less fortunate there. So I need you guys to take a look at that because it's hard for them to see it, and they have to cook the food for the students.

For custodial services, you guys have broach at food services. He's getting paid to be there when he should be at custodial services doing his job. And that's all to help the vendor, someone you guys hired. We're cutting from food service, and food service is not from your general funds. Food service regenerates their own funding.

We're cutting 10 custodians. We don't have that many custodians. We have subs working. 10 custodians? We the it it there's not even subs enough to to open the schools and do what needs to be done.

All we're asking is that you take a look at what's going on. We made different positions higher just so you can say that they're done. They put them on the on the on the cuts. Christina Brooks, half of these people are already on your what are these called? Their Retirement.

How do you put them on the budget to be cut like you're doing a job? They're leaving already. So that's not helping us. Please take a look at this because it doesn't work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, board. I'm Besh. I'm chief swore for the Bill and Trade Council. I just want to echo everything what AFSCME said, my fellow union brothers and sisters from SCI, AFSCME, OEA, and everybody else. We have not many position as them that they need to be cut.

It's only 70 something of us. We're facing a five retirement incentives that they took the deal on that. That goes down to 75. And then facing two more positions, possibly cuts off. And to be honest, there is so many management in confidential places that they're like Michelle said, being hired as a new position, being moved left and right, but gonna be cut.

And that doesn't make any sense to me. We have money to hire and get somebody hundreds of thousands dollars a year, but you're trying to cut two of my members that combined earning $120,000 And that doesn't make any sense. First of all, it's all about maintaining the school and maintaining and continuing having the quality maintenance that we have. We keep doing it for years. We did that many people, we cannot continue doing that.

And please look deeper. Do not listen. Investigate yourself. Do a fact finding because this something is fishy to me here, and it's been not being transparent and open minded, And the public needs to know all about it. And that's all I'm gonna say.

Thank you.

Good evening, board and superintendent. My name is Kampala Tejs Rantifer. I'm the president of the Oakland Education Association, and we stand in solidarity with our labor partners here against cuts. I really wanted to just talk a little bit about educators in Oakland. As you know, we're fighting for some real historic shifts in priorities from our district that really addresses staffing crisis that has destabilized our students and learning every day.

We know it is unacceptable to our members. It's unacceptable to our families, to our communities that OUSD cannot fill hundreds of crucial positions in special education and in our classrooms, where our students need stability and, support the most. That's why we're fighting for a contract that really addresses this crisis that sees 400 plus educators leave each year and against harmful cuts that will only further destabilize our students and schools. If we cannot even fill the our classrooms with qualified permanent district staff, how can we think about making cuts? Where will these people come from?

We know all our schools create a sense of stability and community in our neighborhoods, and it must be our district's priority to fully fund and staff them, especially our schools that are serving predominantly black students, where talks of closures have already been incredibly disruptive and harmful. We're hearing a lot of people talk about closed small schools. That is a dog whistle. What they mean is closed black schools. Oakland educators are proud to be standing with our students, our communities, and our labor partners in this fight to prioritize resources in our classrooms and in our schools.

And, you know, we just really are calling on our superintendent and our board to join us in making the schools that our students truly deserve. Thank you.

I I wish that people would be more fully invested because when I sat at the budget meeting that you had, it was an empty room. When I sat at the teaching and learning committee meeting, it was an empty room. When I sat at the facilities meeting, it was an empty room discussing the deferred maintenance and some of the issues we're struggling with maintaining these buildings. Since 2019, we've had two teacher strikes. If we have another one, that'll be three teacher strikes since 2019.

And let me correct something. If you have to close schools, the state has told you you cannot continually to close schools that are predominantly African American school students in those schools because it's been too many disproportionately closing of African American schools. If you have to close schools, the state has told you you cannot close black schools.

Good evening. I am Tristan Weir. I'm a parent at Sequoia Elementary. I'm also the treasurer of the PTO there, one of the co treasurers. Every year, we look at our budget and we have to make hard decisions.

And I do want to acknowledge that while I don't agree with the decisions you are making, you are making a hard decision. When we look at the budget that we have to see, quite frankly, there are a number of roles that we fill through staffing, through, you know, support for our community that you would expect that a district would fulfill. But our community shows up. It is a working class community. 40% of our students are on free and reduced lunch.

And those of us that are more fortunate give and give and give to close the gap there. And I expect our community will show up again in this next year to close yet another gap, yet another role that the district should be fulfilling. But I wanna ask you, what is there for those communities that don't have an active PTO and active fundraising? Thank you.

Next speakers are David Chow, Kim Ayers, Kim Davis, Perez Miguel, Zeela L, Catherine Joseph, Holly Wilson, Brandon Wall, and Oliver Brennan.

Good evening, board. Oliver Brennan, parent of two. Doctor Sadler, with all due respects, getting on to the next phase. We were there over a year ago. Your predecessor was doing it.

And because of that, four people on this board voted her out of this district behind closed doors. We've been begging this board now for fourteen months to do that work that your predecessor was sent out was sent out because of. And where we are right now tonight, 400 FTEs are planned to be cut. A brutal cut. Yet, even that brutal cut is inadequate to solve our financial stability, our financial crisis.

It's a 65,000,000 plan on one page of a PowerPoint, and our whole is $102,000,000 So this level of cut without a financial stabilization situation resulting is screening of a structural problem we have, and we need to address it. And that phase had started over a year ago. Thank you.

Hi. I'm Holly Wilson, SAU secretary. Last week, I called several members whose roles were listed for elimination. Some of those members are here today, and, of course, I encourage them to speak their truth. But one of them, an incredibly fierce leader in our community whom I personally work closely with, told me she cannot bear to come up and speak knowing how it would impact her.

She told me how her husband hasn't been able to work for five months and that she has two children in college and another in elementary, all of whom are proud OUSD graduates and leaders in their own right, and you do know who this, member is. Her wages have been stretched thin as a sole income earner, and if that wasn't enough, her whole family will lose health insurance should her roles elimination go through. She is one of many of whom you've heard us speak for during SEIU bargaining as we highlighted the fact that we have members living in their cars, unable to pay for groceries or other basic needs. Again, I call for cuts away from the classroom and a student centered budget. Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Catherine Joseph and I'm the chief steward with the SEIU and I will be reading a letter from one of our members who couldn't make it out tonight. My name is Francisco A. Salas Morales and I am the NEST case manager at Freeman High School and a proud Freeman graduate class of 2016. I returned to Fremont last year to complete my internship while earning my bachelor's degree in kinesiology and nutrition from Cal East Cal State East Bay, graduating in May 2025. During my internship, I built strong relationship with students and staff, which ultimately led to opportunity to serve as a case manager.

I accepted this position without hesitation because I believe deeply in the work we do. As a former newcomer student myself, I understand what it feels like to navigate a new country, a new language, and a new educational system while building a better future. Many of our NEST NEST students come from Central America, South America, Mexico, and other parts of the world. I see myself in them. I understand their struggles, their resilience, and their hopes.

The case manager role goes far beyond academics. We support students with attendance, mental health concerns, family challenges, cultural adjustments, and personal growth. We build trust with students who openly seek help and with those who struggle in silence. We collaborate with teachers and administration to ensure students are not only academically successful, but emotionally supported and prepared for life beyond high school. Eliminating case manager positions would have significant and lasting impact on our school and community.

Fremont has made meaningful progress because of the collaboration between educators, support staff. Case managers are a part of that progress. I respectfully urge the urge you to consider the long term impact the decision will have on our most vulnerable students. They deserve stability, guidance, and trusted adults who advocate for their well-being.

Good evening. My name is Sela, and I work in tech services. I'm one of the employees being laid off. Last year alone, our team repaired over a thousand Chromebooks before school started. Technology is no longer optional.

In education, it is essential. I personally support nine schools. When you cut our team in half, those schools don't stop needing support. Teachers will still still need help logging in. Classrooms will still depend on working devices.

When a teacher's computer goes down during instructions, learning stops until we fix it. Reducing our team means slower response times, overwhelmed staff, and classrooms left waiting. It also means that this summer, there may not be enough personal personnel to repair hundreds of of student devices before school begins. This decision doesn't doesn't just affect employees. It affects teachers, students across the district.

We're already working hard under limited resources and modest pay. Cutting critical technology support will create larger operational problems down the line and ultimately impact student learning. I respectfully urge the board to reconsider these layoffs and fully evaluate the long term impact on our schools. Thank you for your time.

Miguel Perez. I'm area rep from SEIU, also work in the tech services department. Last week, the we hear from coatings in our department in the upper management. I'm not happy with that. But this week, we heard of five positions from tech services being cut that are the the the people that we work with the hands of the department, not just the head.

You cannot, kill a bleeding, making reference to to to your words. You cannot help or save a patient that is bleeding, cutting their hands, and cutting their head. Tech service department is the essential and is not even mentioned in any of these conversations until they are getting cutted. I urge you to reconsider this determination of voting on cutting tech services department positions. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Brandon Wall. I'm a parent at Edna Brewer and Crocker Highlands Elementary. I'm also a g one measure g one commissioner. When president Brohard visited Crocker for a d two community meeting last week, she told us that we're losing our community schools manager because it was paid for by one time funds.

As much as I value our community schools manager, I'm not here to advocate to save these positions at Crocker or Lincoln or Sequoia or Peralta or many other schools. Instead, I'm here to advocate that you stop lying to us. Don't tell us that our community that we have to say goodbye to miss Sarah because COVID Esther funds are expiring. Don't tell families at Lincoln that your hands are tied because the learning recovery grant program says that high performing title one schools are not eligible for those funds. Instead, tell us the truth.

Tell us that you do not think that community schools managers and teachers on special assignment are a priority. Tell us that you expect principals and classroom teachers to serve lunch when there's a staff absence. Tell us that you don't think it's a priority for teachers to have staff to cover their classes when they attend IEP meetings. Tell us that you could fund these roles but that you're making other choices that leave no money to give us the fully resource schools that you would expect in a district that has $27,000 per student more than any in California. Why are teachers underpaid and why do our schools feel impoverished?

Start telling us the truth.

Kim Davis. Wow. I mostly agree with what was said, except the lying part. I don't accuse people of lying easily. I will say it's it's frustrating to me because you all are being asked to make decisions, particularly you, superintendent, in this short time frame with information that I think is less than transparent and less than accurate.

And, you know, in '2 was it 2016, 2017, whenever superintendent Johnson Trummel came on, first thing she said was she was gonna restructure central office. I was very excited. I supported her because I thought she would bring that. That was, what, eight, nine years ago? All of this talk of, you know, you've had a and b and c, none of that was implemented.

You guys did not there was no follow through on the things that had to be done, and now you find yourself in a place where you're having to make things happen all at once. So lot of misinformation. I am, you know, I do support a student centered budget, and I don't think that this is the way to go about it, but I do understand that you guys are being put in this position as a result of decisions that weren't made before. Thank you.

Hello. David Chao, Sequoia again. On January 26, 30 elementary principals, including our principal Flynn, sent this board a letter naming five roles they said are essential to a functioning school. Community school manager, teacher on special assignment, attendance specialist, stiff substitute, noon supervisor. At Sequoia, three of those five are on tonight's list.

Our t our teacher on special assignment, our only instructional coach is eliminated entirely. Literacy tutor is cut in half, noon supervisor cut in half, a school of 465 students, 45% title one, with no instructional leadership beyond a single principal. These are the people closest to our kids. I know this board is facing impossible choices, but 30 of your own school leaders told you what they need. And I'd like to know whether that letter factored into tonight's decisions.

Thank you.

Thank you. And I believe that was our last speaker for this item. Board colleagues, director Lada.

Yeah. I have an amendment that I'd like to propose. If general counsel can put it on the screen, please. It adds one word to the four that you listed as priorities. It adds enrollment.

And I think the reason why I'd like I'm hoping that it is friendly is that we And there it is. And then I think if we can go down, if we can scroll down To the blue. To second blue. Thank you. You'll see that it says end enrollment.

And the reason why is that it's true that while attendance is how we are funded by the state, It is also true that that attendance is out of the total number of students enrolled. And I would love to live in a place where we could predict how many students were going to be enrolled, and if we consolidated programs, that they would stay in our district. But we don't live in that environment. We unfortunately live in a district where we've created a policy of school choice, where we've created a significant number of charter schools over the decades. And we have other districts that are very happy to enroll our kids.

And so I do think that we need to ensure that we are maintaining the enrollment stabilization work that we're doing. Again, this is going to be only if we find ongoing funding, and I hope that that is friendly to the maker.

It is a friendly amendment to myself. Director Brohard, director Brohard, if you could just come back really quickly, is this two words friendly amendment to you as well and enrollment? Can you say that in the microphone?

Oh, Yes.

That's fine. Thank you. Yes. This is a friendly amendment. Any other thoughts, director Lotta?

Okay. And oh, can we just keep that up, actually? Okay. Director Hutchinson?

Thank you. I guess we're gonna finally see it tonight when people are, you know, like Malcolm talked about, all of them chickens are coming home to roost. It's pretty wild what's going on right now. So I just wanna really point out. So we just, had a an item before this on the agenda where there was no plan, no vote, so there is nothing to inform any of the decisions that are listed here in this change in workforce.

Nobody here can justify why these positions rather than other positions. I don't even know who developed this list. This is work that we should have done months ago that I was asking for to be done months ago, and it never got done. So if you look at the memo at the start of this resolution and you scroll down to fiscal impact, which should be required on every resolution, especially a resolution that involves laying off hundreds of staff members. It says, for fiscal impact, implementation of these reductions will generate salary and benefit savings in the twenty sixth, twenty seventh fiscal year and is necessary to align ongoing expenditure with projected revenues and declining enrollment and reduced funding.

Not one number. Not one number. Nowhere in here does it say what savings this will even achieve or where the funding even comes from because there's no plan, y'all. And this is the work that this board has failed to do for months. And today is the last day to approve anything.

Now half of these changes in workforce, I only saw an hour before the agenda was posted on Sunday. Seventy two hours beforehand. Because they were just developed this week. And the school board supposed to not only authorize the decisions and policies that would have formed these changes, we have to authorize all of this stuff. And as you could see, there's still not a plan.

This is never how been how anything has worked in the past. You can go even look at the documents from last year where every decision was had a definition of what that decision was, was costed out, and had an impact that it would cause. It's actually illegal for this board to vote on this or would require unanimous vote since there's no fiscal impact analysis included. And for me personally, I could never vote on a plan that I'm given 72 beforehand. A plan that includes, like we heard from Sequoia, eliminating all supports from a school with 460 students that their own funding base can afford to fund these positions.

And when I've asked, nobody even knows could tell me who developed those one pagers. Or what about the fact all the middle schools were told they're losing half their electives? Half of their electives. That was never decided, and now these school board directors are gonna actually vote for this. So I would never vote for something like this.

This is the outcome of not doing the work, and this is the outcome of not having a plan that informs it. Because if there was a plan where things were justified and then we could bring it to the community and have conversations, I'm sure if it made the most sense, everyone would wanna do it because we need to address this deficit that this board has allowed to balloon.

Thank you.

But this isn't how it's done. I would never vote for this, and let's see how many people who were elected off of union dollars. Let's see what they're gonna do now when they're really put to it.

Thank you, director Hutchinson. Director Thompson? Whoo. Director Lotta, appreciate it. Oh, director Thompson, go ahead.

Yeah. I will I wasn't gonna say anything, but I will say this. There is something to be said for a person who has worked as a teacher, an administrator, and also at an administrator not only in the district but at the county level. I have to be honest and say, sometimes I sit and just shake my head because a lot of this is pontification. In other words, people are just saying words, and I'm not sure if the words well, I am sure.

The words are having effect on somebody, but I hope it's having the effect where an individual is looking deeper at what's being said and then maybe weighing the options of whether it's a reality or not. So, again, I'm basically sitting still listening at what's being said and wondering if what I tell my students, time is a precious resource. Once lost, you can never get it back.

Thank you. I know director Berry has a question that she's asking. Director Brohard or I'm sorry, director Smith. Smith.

I just wanna say how confused I am on the potential cuts that are being made, and I'm really confused on how they're gonna benefit our budget at all. I've had Dewey students tell me and other All City Council members that they do not have a lunch staff. Lunch staff to properly warm up their food or to properly serve it to students. So they've had their principal step in. A principal who has other tasks, other things to deal with, they've had to step in and feed the children and that's just an unnecessary task put on a staff member who should have the right support that they need to run their school properly.

So I really just urge the board dearly, I hope that you're really paying close attention to what reductions that you're making and actually bringing forth the student centered budget that we all say that we support.

Thank you, director Smith. Looks like, director Berry.

I just wanted to say that to be transparent about my experience right now, I am more uncomfortable uncomfortable than I would desire to be in the minutes or seconds before a vote so critical. Doctor Sadler, I do understand that you inherited an impossible task that you did not create, that you received a set of constraints that you did not envision, and that is tough. And I think also difficult is the task of hearing sometimes for the first time, some of the impacts of these decisions minutes before a vote and having to process that quickly. And yes, I know that is the job. And I'm struggling with it right now because back in December when the board was asked to provide guidance, I put forth some recommendations or amendments to improve the the resolution, things that I thought would meaningfully improve the resolution.

Part of that was process. Part of it was making sure that there was a process for implementing or designing and implementing a plan, right, that would address some of the questions that I have right now. That those did not move forward and that's fine, but now we're here. And after many months of being on the board, typically voting in what people call the minority, today my vote matters more. And I'm understanding that in an incredible way in this moment, and I'm I'm trying to treat it seriously.

If you ask me in this moment right now, what would I do? I'm genuinely on the fence. But the voting consistent with my values regarding this reduction in force would be I do not understand it, and therefore I cannot support it. I think voting with a broad perspective of all of the impacts, not just to staff, not just to to to our students, but also our bigger fiscal picture complicates things significantly. Because what do we do if this is not the plan we move forward with with the time that we have?

These are big questions, and I do not have any of the answers, and I have issue with that. And so today, regardless of what happens, if this is the plan, then my ask, regardless of who supports it to go through, is that we treat seriously the amount of rigor we need to to actually build a plan that answers some of the questions and hold ourselves accountable to to following that regardless. That is my time.

Thank you, director Barry. Director Brohard. So superintendent, have some questions for you as some some of the items that came up from board colleagues, but I wanted to say a few words about other supports that I'm that I specifically want to make sure that we are finding resources for. So again, in this moment where our immigrant families are consistently under attack, a refugee and asylee office is the most extremely important area that we need to be funding for those most vulnerable families. I know those three positions are up for elimination and or reduction on this list.

I encourage us to seek any and all funding to make sure that those are restored as quickly as possible. I also wanna uplift our family engagement specialists and our interpreters. Again, those are folks that are making sure that our families not only understand how to enroll in our district, how to support our students in our district, but support the cultural competency of our staff as they work with those families, and make sure that they can be whole, partners in that work. So a couple of things that were said around, you know, these these reductions coming out of nowhere. Can you talk a little bit about what the process was that staff and families went through at school sites to identify positions or reductions that were made that that brought those those additional, positions to us today, and, any other, processes that you and staff went through to identify further reductions, that you're bringing forward today in both in this in this RIF?

Price the additional positions that were added to the list recently, very specifically, is a is a regular process that we have at the school sites. Every school site gets allocations based on lots of things. The projected enrollment, the funding that is available through our state, the funding that comes available through specific funds that are grants, specifically funding that comes from federal governments based on specific values, set, you know, specifics. And then, with those allocations, school sites are given a specific amount of money based on those factors. And the school site works to make those decisions through the SSCs, school site council meets and determines their priorities in terms of how those funds are gonna be used.

Often PTAs are involved in those discussions. There are faculty advisory councils at the site. There's several different processes at the site that determine the priorities of how the funds beyond the classroom teachers are set. But the amount of allocation that comes to the site, some of those cuts were the allocate allocations were done by central office based on the sunsetting of grants, the sunsetting of of different programs, the enrollment needs, and and other factors. But there are opportunities at the site with additional The resources in those allocations, those priorities are set by school site councils and other staff organizations.

Thank you so much. And because of a request from a board colleague to take a recess, we're gonna take a short five minute recess before we take a vote on this item. We'll be right back. Thank you everybody for being here.

K. So please make sure there's no groups of four discussing it in recess. That would be a violation of the Brown Act.

Okay. We'll get this technology down. If all board directors can return to the dais, please. And mister Reichstraw, can we have a roll call to establish quorum? Yes,

madam president. On the roll call, to establish quorum. Student directors Simmons absent. Student director Smith absent. Director Lauder?

Present.

Director Williams? Present, sir. Director Hutchinson? Present. Director Barry?

Present.

Director Thompson? Present. Vice president Bachelor? Here. And president Brohard?

Here. Quorum present. And I now note that student director Smith is also present.

We are going to break with protocol for just a second. We had two nurses who, again, thank you to our district nurses, three nurses, sorry, who were We actually deserve, I think, a standing ovation. They were helping one of our board members in a medical emergency.

But what we're going

to do, they wanted to speak on the last item and they weren't present, so we're going to let them speak now.

Good evening. My name is Kristen Jeong, and I am one of the district's school nurses. I understand difficult budget decisions must be made, but I respectfully urge you to protect site based school nursing positions. We have 30 nursing FTE with two vacancies. That means 28 nurses are serving over 34,000 students across 80 school sites.

If four positions are eliminated along with upcoming retirements, we could approach one nurse for every 1,700 students, which is over our max caseload and more than twice the ratio recommended by the National Association of School Nurses. 21 of us already cover three to four school sites, meaning some schools have a nurse only one day per week. Workload directly impacts safety. When nurses are stretched thin, prevention becomes crisis response. Seizures, anaphylaxis, diabetic emergencies, and mental health crisis do not occur only when a school nurse is scheduled to be there.

When no nurse is present, unlicensed staff must respond or call 911, increasing risk, liability, and disruption to learning. In districts like LA Unified, there is a registered nurse at every school site. Oakland students deserve equitable access to healthcare and support as well. Cutting nursing positions will not reduce student medical need. It will increase risk and decrease our ability to provide safe, proactive care.

Our students' health is foundational to their ability to learn. Please prioritize keeping school nurses. Thank you.

Good evening school board. My name is Natasha, and I've been with the district for about eleven years now. I'm here tonight just to plead, please do not cut the nurse positions. This year, as in past years, we have schools without a district nurse. We currently have students who must be supported medically by contracted out agency nurses.

These agency nurses are not always prepared to handle some of the complex medical conditions that our registered credentialed district school nurses can. They do not have the training. There's also a very high turnover for our agency nurses. Sometimes students see a different agency nurse every day of the week. How is that safe and fair to our students?

Contracting out also cost the district a significant amount of money. Cutting district nurse positions, will only increase the need for our agency nurses at a potential increased cost to the district, at a potential safety risk for our students. Thank you.

Hello board, thank you so much for allowing us up here. My name is JB Berry. I'm a school nurse that's been in Oakland for three years and I really appreciate y'all's time. To be very candid, I don't really know what I'm gonna say up here other than I love our babies, I love the nursing team that we do have, and I think we're really impactful when we're there. I think we're really impactful even when we're not there to keep safe, and I know any single one of us would answer the call if needed off the clock or not.

I absolutely adore my babies. I've worked at TCN, ICS, Garfield, Oopa, Roosevelt, Bret Hart, Castlemont, and all of our babies need love. These are not the only schools that are impacted. All of them, all of them, all of them need us. And the agencies, nurses need us too.

I know Natasha spoke on that. And it's because, yes, they come to us, but not even their contracted agencies have clinical nursing support to support them. So when our agency nurses have questions, they do contact us. They say, please, district nurse help. We have these questions, and we will be there even if it's not in our contract to train or to support them like that.

And we wanna be there,

and we

want this for our students to keep them safe. I love my babies. Thank you all so much. Have a really good night. With

that, I would like to call the question. So if we can have a roll call vote on the motion.

Okay. On the motion to adopt s dot dash three, which is the notice of layoff of classified personnel re riff for school year 2627. On the roll call, student director Simmons is absent. Student director Smith.

No. K.

Alright. Director Ladder?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Barry?

Director Barry?

I'm so sorry that this has been

I'm sorry. I can't hear you.

No.

Director Thompson?

Yes.

Vice president Batchelor? Yes. President Burghard?

Yes.

The motion's agreed to.

The next item on the agenda is item s three I'm sorry, s four. Eliminate 25 dash zero four 26 dash zero four four nine eliminates certificated positions due to a reduction of a particular kinds of service, talent, and human resources department. Is there a motion to adopt?

I'll make that I'll make the motion to adopt, including the amended language per Director Lotta's amendment.

I'll second Which can be shared

on the screen once again, if need be.

I'll second it.

Right, and so we're gonna have public comment on it now. And Do

you wanna put that up on on the screen?

So once again, it'll be with the same language, and now there now therefore be it resolved provided that the district meets its general fund reserve requirements per statute and board policy if new and or ongoing funds are identified subsequent to the district's second interim report, the board directs the superintendent to alert the board of education and bring forth recommendations regarding the use of such funds that are consider that are consistent, sorry, with board policy feasibility and which prioritize the restoration of student facing positions that support attendance, safety, academics, and enrollment who are subject to layoff who are subject to layoffs, effective the 2627 school year.

Are there public comments on this item?

Yes, president Bruhard. We have 12 speakers.

Oops, sorry, minute each.

Should I call first five or all speakers? First, speakers, okay. Speakers are Salu Lavalin, Tanya Kappner, Adrienne Hogue, Bridgeton Kokojevic, Jill Habig, Judy Greenspan, Nicole A, Oliver Brennan, Brandon Wall, Mark Ergood, Kampalatas Resenfer, and Christina M. And also David Chow, Makayla, and Kim Davis. Those complete the speakers for this current item.

Thank you. If you heard your name, if you would line up. Looks like everybody has lined up. Thank you. One minute each.

I'm Tanya Kappner with the Equal Opportunity Now by Any Means Necessary, a teachers caucus and a site rep at Sojourner Truth Online Middle School, an OEA rep. And I'm here to say I demand the classified layoffs be reversed. No cuts. We need literacy tutors. With the students said it best.

No cuts to the teachers, the counselors, the nurses, the electives. We do not accept cuts to newcomer programs and English learning labs. And we know the money's there and we're going to fight for it. The OEA is preparing to strike because we know this is a question of power. Striking now is the best way to fight these layoffs to the community.

Stand with us. California has the money. We would be the fourth richest nation if we were a country. We demand Newsom shakedown that money for our schools. We've won it before with strike action.

I know this from the '96 strike. We have to fight. We have to take on Trump. We have to make Sanctuary City real and fight for all our students. No cuts.

No layoffs. Teachers are getting ready to strike for our students and for our community.

Hi everybody, I'm Aidee Hogue, I'm a resource teacher at La Esquelita, I'm a proud member of Eon Bam Caucus. I taught in this district for over ten years and I'm very proud to have held the line in several strikes. Strikes that I know improved the quality of Oakland schools for students and workers, but did not go far enough in demanding that California as the richest state in the richest country in the world provide the best quality education instead of the cut rate mediocre education that the billionaires want served up. And I know that if we strike together now, we can win real victories for public education, and that we must. And not just in order to save public education, but to save democracy.

The aim of any fascist regime is to lower the living standards for the majority of working people. We will not let Trump do that. We will not let Newsom do that, and we will not let you do that. We will be on strike until these cuts are reversed, until we get a decent pay for teachers, and until we get real quality education for our students.

Mark Ergood. Mark Ergood. Eon Bam Caucus. At this moment in time, any attack on public education, any cutting of public education is an attack on it is following Trump's program. We know that a central principle of fascism is to destroy public education because it's a democratic institution, and it's absolutely counterposed to fascism.

This our union, OEA, all the unions, all of the community of Oakland needs to stand up. We need to strike. We need to march in the streets. We need to oppose Trump. We need to oppose fascism.

We need to defend our students against the ice thugs that are attacking them in their schools. We need to fight to make the sanctuary cities real. And this fight around what are our staffing? What are our school conditions is a central fight for all of Oakland for all of California. We can lead the nation.

Join the movement that started in Minneapolis. Get Trump out. Stop this fascist takeover. Defend public education and democracy. That's our that's our task.

We need to rise to the occasion.

Hi, I'm Judy Greenspan and I chair the OEA substitute teachers caucus. I'm also on the executive board and the bargaining committee. And I believe that there should not be any layoffs whatsoever. And I wanna talk specifically about a Flatland school, United for Success. You've heard from Hill Schools.

At United for for Success, we don't have a PTA or a PTSO or whatever they're called. We don't have any any lining. You're talking about You're talking about cutting our attendance clerk to 50%, which means she will no longer, and she has a family, she will no longer have health insurance. You're talking about decimating a beautiful music program that we have by firing, by laying off the music teacher. And the music program, the instruments are just overflowing.

He has done so much incredible work. You're talking about already we've had to deal with ELD staff being laid off or positions ending. And we have Math teachers and English teachers and Science teachers teaching ELD to fill in the gap. This is ridiculous. We need ELD teachers.

We need enough sped teachers. We need enough programs. We need an end to these cuts, and we don't wanna suffer because we are a flat land school, a high needs community with students who a 100% get free and reduced lunch. It's not 30 or 40%. So these cuts are going to really affect students really disproportionately based on income, and that should stop.

Hi. My name is Nicole Ambrosio, and I have two students in OUSD. I feel so extremely lucky that the teachers at my school are fantastic. But to create an environment where kids can learn and be safe, we need more than just a teacher in the classroom and a single administrator. We need rich and inclusive learning environments where kids know they are safe and valued and have a space and support to learn.

We can only do this with tier two interventions, attendance supports, mental health supports, nursing, counseling. We need to increase trauma informed practices and restorative practices and reduce disproportionality in special ed and discipline referrals. We know this. We want equity for all our students. But to meet these goals, we need people who support the whole child.

These roles aren't extra. CSMs, TOSAs, therapists, counselors, and nurses provide essential services to our kids and critical supports to their teachers and communities at school. The cuts that are proposed are not just sad for the schools and communities that are losing staff members. They're an injustice to the students in the district. I understand we have to accept some level of change and restructuring, but low hanging fruit for these cuts cannot be the people who support our kids every day.

We cannot balance the budget on the backs of our students. Thank you.

Hi. My name's, Brandon Wall, and I'm a proud parent of four OUSD students. I'm also a measure g one commissioner board. I really need your help. I live in D 4 and director Hutchinson is my representative.

Do you have any idea how much I dislike it when director Hutchinson is not just a truth teller, but also a fortune teller and a soothsayer? I encourage everyone in this room to go online and visit his face Facebook page. Today, he pinned two posts, one from September and one from October. As you'll see in those posts, back then he knew that our school board's leadership team was not serious about solving our current budget problems. He knew that we would be in this room on this day without a serious plan.

He knew that the board majority had chosen not to prioritize setting aside money for raises for our teachers. Each month, I told him to just give him a chance. Each month, I was disappointed. This happened in October and November and December. This even happened in January, and this even happened two weeks ago when I was in this room with about 10 other people with Oliver.

Yeah. There weren't a lot of people there. When I was in college, I admit there were a couple times when I didn't study the night before a final, but I was a college student. You're in charge of a billion dollar budget that determines the fate of thousands of staff and 34,000 students. Your direction and constraints made it impossible for superintendents, sad learner, staff to do their jobs.

You put them in a position of pulling all nighters last week with hopes of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Our children need you to do better.

Good evening. I'm Christina Means. I am a proud parent of two OUSD students, and I'm Peralta's CSM. I've been doing this job for three years, and two years before that, I was doing it in a volunteer basis. The amount of COVID tests I gave to students that were my own were amazing.

And the connection I've made with our community, I can't even begin to explain. The cut to Peralta CSM and TSA is going to significantly alter our community in a way that I can't even begin to explain. I will tell you the trifecta of the principals, TSA, and myself. We are seeing double digit improvement in our black and brown students. And that's not by accident.

That's by intentional services. That is about pulling them aside and reminding them that their improvement matters, that they are part of our community.

They're being

part of graduation is like, matters. And by cutting us, you're leaving teachers who will leave. Our teachers are amazing, and they will leave. You're leaving us with nothing, and you're leaving a community with nothing. A principal who's amazing cannot survive on her own.

You've given services and you're gonna take them away, and our teachers and our principal will not survive, and our students will leave to charters or private schools. So I believe in all OUSD schools, and I want including our own. So I hope you understand the impact that Jennifer Everhart and myself make. And it's not just us as individuals, it's us as jobs. So I hope you're thinking about not just our school or us as individuals, but our students.

These three fifty kids matter.

Good evening. My name is Mikayla Kobel, and I'm the parent of a first grader at Sequoia Elementary. And I'm an instructor at San Francisco State University where I support educators in their training and preparation. Yesterday, I attended a professional conference on California's new literacy road map. Our state is implementing annual universal literacy screenings for t k through second graders to determine which students are at risk for reading difficulties.

School districts are responsible for ensuring the early readers have access to the tiered support they need, with the primary recommendation being high impact tutoring for those who are flagged as needing extra support. Which roles could facilitate this support? Exactly the positions this board is voting to cut tonight. At Sequoia, our teacher on special assignment is being fully eliminated, and our early literacy reading tutor is being cut in half. We are moving in the opposite direction of what the literacy roadmap is instructing the schools to do.

You are eliminating the infrastructure that our state's own literacy framework says is necessary, leaving us without the basic necessities required for our schools to function. These cuts affecting all of our students were a choice, and I refuse to accept that they were inevitable.

Right. Good evening, OUSD board and community. My name is Amia. I'm with the Black Organizing Project and I'm a proud East Oakland native and an OUSD alumna. Tonight, I'm asking the board for two things, vote no on any layoffs or cuts to classroom staff and to settle a fair contract with OEA.

Our schools are the heart of this community, Cutting essential staff in a district where black students are already disproportionately harmed is not neutral. It is a choice. These are not behavior issues. They are system failures driven by unmet needs and lack of prevention. Nearly six years ago, the community won the George Floyd resolution, a commitment to safety without policing and investment in prevention and care.

That promise remains unfunded. A win on paper without resources is not real. Tonight, you're voting to send layoff notices to 400 staff, cutting counselors and prevention programs guarantees harm will deepen. We call on Oakland Unified School District to fund community led prevention programs through a $300,000 contract with trusted organizations. As a child of an educator who served this district for over thirty four years, it is heartbreaking heartbreaking to know that my mother has the years to retire, but not the income.

Fun educators do not make cuts. Thank you.

My name is Zachary Norris. I'm with the Black Organizing Project. I'm also the parent of two students in OUSD. And I feel really blindsided. I feel blindsided because a, I signed up to speak on another issue and you all cut the public comment and then didn't provide any accommodation to folks who signed up.

And secondly, I feel blindsided because folks we met with at the district all claimed that they had a commitment to safety. But if you cut all of the positions that are most critical to students, that serve students most closely from nurses to to TSAs. All of these are the positions that students require and need for their safety. And you don't provide any justification for why these cuts in particular are being made. You just give people layoff notices?

What kind of shit is that?

Hello. My name is Najere. I'm with the Black Organizing Project. As a young organizer, I have been in spaces with peers and mentors who inspire me to wrestle with contradictions and strive for something better. These cuts cut into the lives of education of young folks who are at the heart of our community and are very as much as the future as they are the present.

What does it tell to youth who are face to face with systems that reproduce harm and lack resources in the day to day, then go to school and face the same? This will have catastrophic consequences for black youth, students, our communities, our educational workers all across campuses. We need more positions and trainings to support youth, not less. We need to better our school systems with true investment in a culture and a climate beyond criminalization in OUSD, with long term investment in educators and school workers who are the backbone of this work. We need spaces that flip the script, are led by youth, inspire critical thinking, and encourage the challenge of authority because that has what that is what has really prepared me for this world.

So vote no to any layoffs or cuts, and to settle a fair contract with OEA. Thank you.

Good evening, board members. My name is Kaylee Oshoah. I'm a resident of Oakland and an organizer with a black organizing project. As black community members, caregivers, parents, youth, we worked for more than ten years to get police out of schools to protect black children. Ten years.

Part of that work is implementation, and you are rolling back all of the community organizing efforts we have put together as a community to protect our young people. How many people behind me are educational workers? Can you stand up? Can we give you a hand? You are the heartbeat of care for our students.

These are human beings with lives, stories, families. They're not just positions on a piece of paper. You are destroying the fabric of our communities right now. Shame on you. Vote no on these layoffs.

Again, this is not, you know, this is this is an ongoing problem. It has been an ongoing problem for a long time. Diff earlier superintendents, earlier boards. But one, you know, one thing I have appreciated, dashboards. I love dashboards.

Love data. So I looked at the dashboard for confidential employees, expecting to find last year, not thinking it would be updated. But it was updated for 2526, and it said we had 131 confidential employees. And for folks who don't know, those are people who work mostly, probably all in the central office, all in the most senior of positions. Then I look at the cuts, and how it's going to disproportionately impact the confidential employees, and I see that it says we have 149.9 FTE, not the 131 that's listed on the dashboard.

So if we had 131 at the beginning of the school year, and we have 149.9 now, Where what are those positions that we've added? Why did we add them at a time that we were, you know, supposed to be reducing our budget? And or was this just, you know, a little bit of me thinks this maybe was just adding in positions so you can cut positions, kind of raising the prices before you make things go on sale. This is something that this is why we don't believe what we get from OUSD because there are so many inconsistencies, and this just doesn't make sense. This is not student centered budget.

This is not supporting the people that work with students every day. We need to have better than this. Thank you.

And it's not restructuring. It's just scattershot cutting. These 400 people who are now gonna get notifications to what ends are those 400 people gonna get cut. This is a $65,000,000 plan according to this little sheet here, but we've got a $102,000,000 structural deficit for next year. We have our main teachers union, OEA, who are looking for a new contract that we're seeing in the press is gonna cost between 28,000,000 and 50,000,000 when you include all the rest of our labor partners.

So we're looking at a $150,000,000 potentially whole. The lowest then is a 102,000,000 if you don't give any raises to OEA. Please explain to us, the community, how is this $65,000,000 plan with scattershot cuts keeping us out of receivership this July 1 after we exited this last July 1? How is this solving the problem? Let us know, please.

Good

evening, directors. My name is Malaika Parker with Black Organizing Project. I am standing here super, super sad. I've said to some of y'all before, and I will keep saying it, I have been in this city for so long, and I've heard this same conversation over and over and over again. I went to Peralta, I went to Claremont, I also have a parent who is a teacher in the district.

And I remember I remember being at Peralta, and I remember how robust our education was. I remember all of the services, all of the resources, all of the classes, classes, all of the care, all of the things that were possible because we had well staffed schools. I also remember shortly after that, my mom standing on the picket line because she, as a teacher, wanted more. She wanted to be able to afford to take care of me in the city that she loves. And at that time, that wasn't possible.

This is so many years later, and it's the same conversation. Not only is this a threat to safety, right, because if we don't have caring adults who have eyes on children, it is not safe for them. It is not safe for the adults. It is not safe for the children who are in schools, but it also keeps this district in a place where we're having the same conversation over and over and over again, and it prevents thinking about why are families leaving the district. What is happening with enrollment?

How do we fix whatever is happening that so many families are leaving? Why is it that the, the metrics for, for engagement and improvement and enrichment aren't aren't getting better every year? What is happening? But because we're stuck in this crisis that has not been fixed for many, many, many, many years, we don't ever get to how do we actually create a district where all black and brown children succeed, where they feel like they have a home, where this where this district doesn't have to be in competition with other cities, with charters, because people are actually trying to get their children into OUSD. Oakland is a beautiful, beautiful city with so much potential.

This district is filled with that potential. But this constant conversation, this false false narrative about not having enough money keeps us from fulfilling that potential, and it just isn't fair. It's not fair to the families. It's not fair to the children. It's not fair to the potential of Oakland.

Please do better. Thank you.

As a former teacher, thirty two years teaching in the city of New Orleans, I have participated in strikes being a member of the teacher union. And I can tell you strikes hurt children. Strikes hurt children. The classrooms are not functioning. Parents struggle to find out what they are going to do with their kids.

So if we've had since twenty nineteen two strikes and we're getting ready to have a third strike, this is not healthy for the district. And I know that you have given this community of teachers, parents an opportunity to come up with a solution. And all I hear is that your solution is not working. But what is the solution that we can give you? I haven't heard one yet.

All I've heard from the community is that what you're doing as far as your solution is not good enough. But we haven't come up with a recommendation to say what is good enough. And we've been given the opportunity to be in the room to participate. And I know people have not been in the room to participate. So as soon as you finish, people are gonna pile up out of the room and leave you to finish this meeting with very little participation.

If you want something to happen that's best for children, fully participate on an ongoing regular basis to help this district get where it needs to be, and stop just telling you what you're not doing because we collectively have to do it on a regular basis.

And that's not it. And

with that, are there, board comments? Director Barry?

The first thing that I wanna share is to me, it sounds like everybody's right. Our students deserve more, our teachers deserve more, and there is an incredible budget deficit, and we have to treat it seriously. I don't think there is a win. The vote we just made, I wanna be very clear, was not a vote against making cuts. There is no path to maintaining local control, to long term fiscal solvency without doing something dramatically different, and it does involve cuts.

For me, I still believe even in a moment of crisis that there's a basic level of transparency of information that I need, that we all need in order to make difficult decisions like this, and that is all I'm standing on. But I just wanted to be clear, you're alright, but we don't have the money to do everything that we wanna do. And there will be trade offs we have to make. And doctor Sadler, I applaud you for being here for the ride and for leading it. And I think to echo what we just heard in the last public comment, it is going to require moving forward that this is like a full community process.

And some of it is gonna be initiated by the board and by staff, but we don't have a great track record of that even before I got here. And so to some extent, part of what I'm saying is there is an invitation to hold us accountable for the right kind of process, for the big changes that we still have to make. Because remember, the cuts that are on the table that are being decided today does not close the deficit that we are aware of. And so more is to come, more changes to come, and we all need to be doing this work together in order for there to be any semblance of a unified district at the end of this.

Are there any other board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. And thank you everyone who came out tonight, who left an e comment, who's online, hundreds of emails I've received, or were a part of the any of the communities that I've had a chance to meet with over the last couple of weeks. Not only am my heart broken, I'm I'm furious. You know, I have relied on the world class education I got in an Oakland elementary school, and it provided me for my whole life. Got me to college, got my younger brother to the Ivy Leagues as a lawyer.

OUSD put a roof over my head. My mom was a forty year teacher. The reason I fought to be on the school board in the first place is because the two schools I had worked at after ten years were closed. And it was heartbreaking that I didn't see the students I was working with being given the same opportunities that I had had growing up in Oakland. You know, and to be honest with you for a minute, I mean, there's some people in this room actually who have said wild things about me over the last few years.

Even as I put my head down and tried to do the work, we got OUSD out of receivership. We had a restructuring plan on the books. We extended our homegrown superintendent. We finally brought in financial leadership that untangled the mess of the past. And it was all working, and we were teed up to have a year long community conversation as we regain local control to make the decisions as a community about how we wanted to build going forward because we haven't had that opportunity in a generation.

And over the last fourteen months, it's all been derailed. Our deficit has been allowed to balloon. People who have claimed that they actually support certain stakeholder groups and constituencies. As you can see tonight, a lot of those claims that they supported you, they just evaporated as they voted to cut jobs. Just like it evaporated when they refused to do the work to bring forward a fiscal solvency plan.

Saint rocket science, we've done this work every year I've been on the board. They could have looked at a rubric from last year and just inputted numbers and we would have been better off than we were now. And it's fine however one thinks, but I hope everyone's paying attention to the vote tonight, the lack of a plan, and who's voting to cut jobs based on no justification at all. No justification at all. No justification at all.

They took your dues to get elected, and they don't even need a reason to cut jobs. I ain't never seen anything like it. I'm the only Oakland native on this board. And, man, y'all, we've gotten so soft. There was a time.

Zach, there was a time we would have run these folk out of here, man. This is low hanging fruit. So please, after today, because this doesn't end, because we still have to figure out a fix. We need to get the keys back to the car. But come on y'all.

I hope this opens up some eyes and I hope going forward, the house is packed like this because again, like we all know deep in our hearts, only we can save us. Thank you.

Director Williams.

Thank you, president Brohard. I I am hurt and pained by these votes today. But what I think about is I think about this district received $280,000,000 in COVID funds. $280,000,000 in COVID funds. Spending went up, and guess what?

It's coming down right now. And it's painful. It's painful. These cuts should have been a long time ago. And I think we actually we feel the pain right now, but if we actually looked back at 2020, 2020, the Alameda County superintendent wrote a letter and said to the board president that is sitting right here, we need to cut $200,000,000.

Board president. The the letter they wrote the letter. Brandon, take a look at the letter. It's right there. It's written.

She wrote the letter to the board and said you need to cut $200,000,000. So we got lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. That's what we're peddling today. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, manipulation, distortion. The facts are the facts.

If we receive $280,000,000 from the federal government, you're gonna have to cut $280,000,000. If you spend up $280,000,000, you're gonna have to bring that back down. And in 2021, 2022, 2023, the board member who was the budget chair who saw the budget, who voted on the budget, knew what was coming. It's a fact. I'm not I'm not lying.

There are lies that's happening right now. I'm not lying. It's a fact. Take a look. Go back and look who's the budget chair in 2020, 2021, 2022, '23, and '24.

What? Oh, 2021. Thank you for correcting me. I appreciate it. Look at 2021.

That's great. Oh, yeah. You were elected because OEA endorsed you. We were on the same slate together. So you got paid by educators, got you elected.

Lies, lies, lies, lies. And you had a strike when you was president. Madam president.

We're gonna get back

on end. Can

we have other near the board comments? Mister So

point of clarification. As we as it was mentioned at the start Excuse me. President Brohard, don't tell me no. Point of clarification. You made a statement at the start that we were gonna act a certain way, and there wouldn't be any personal attacks.

You allow all of that to happen. It's fine. It's it's no. That's not a personal attack at all. It's fine.

But I just wanna point out how this works and how this happens. And directors would rather spend their time talking about me and what they think happened in the past instead of the vote before them now where they're about to sell out their own union that pays them. Thank you.

Okay. We've heard a number of attacks. Let's get down to the business of voting. Do you have a comment? Yes.

Director Basham.

Thank you. I wanna remind folks, well, a few things. None of us wanna be in this place. None of us wanna make reductions. None of us wanna see valuable staff leave the district.

None of us want to can I speak, please, without being interrupted? Thank you. So we never wanna be in this place, but we're always here. And let's think about why we're always here. We talked about attachment a, attachment b, attachment c, all of which were to director director Hutchinson's point, amazing strategies are gonna get us out of the hole that we're in and make it so that we don't have budget reductions.

And every single time we made those horrific budget reductions, guess what? We had another $100,000,000 shortfall. So those were not strategies that were working, but we did it for three consistent years. And so we are trying to do something different this year and it doesn't potentially look different because of the actions that we must take because again of one time dollars that we were leaning on for so long, but we are taking different actions than we were in the past, right? We are offering a retirement benefit because we know some of our amazing folks that have been here for the longest want and deserve a dignified retirement.

And so we are moving that forward and that will be a budget savings if we don't replace those positions. So that's why the superintendent has taken a clear look at those positions and has identified them for reductions if we are not going to replace those positions. We have not done that over the last, what is it, ten years or so, even longer. And we have not been able again, and that is is a strategy that we're facing that we're using. Again, we are doing things differently.

And so I want us to focus on the future and not continue to drag to the past of what folks did or did not do, what, you know, people that were here or weren't here because again, what we were doing did not work. So we have to make something different and we have to make those tough decisions. And unfortunately, we have to make them today. So I really want us to think about if we're actually trying to pay our folks so that there's not a work action. If we are trying to make sure that we have the resources we need to to have a functioning school site school sites for next year, we have to do some of this work now and do this extremely hard work of making sure if we identify other dollars that we bring folks back that are valuable in our district.

And that again is the strategies that we've included in this amendment, and I appreciate director Lotta for also including enrollment as a piece of this because that is also key to this moment. But again, it is this moment calls us to do something different and we are. And I really trust our superintendent in taking this different direction. And so I want us to continue down this path and not in the name calling, the side conversations, or the Facebook posts that lead to nowhere, but more division, more divisiveness, and more bitterness in our district, and that is not what we need.

Thank you. Are there other board comments? Mister Rakestar, can we have a roll call and the vote, please?

On the motion to adopt s dot dash four, which is file ID 260Dash0449, the elimination of the certificate positions due to reduction of particular kinds of services. On the roll call, student directors are absent. Director, Thompson. Yes. Director Barry.

Abstain.

Director, Hutchinson. No. Director Williams. Yes. Director Lauder?

Yes.

Vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

President Burhardt? Yes. Motion's adopted.

Thank you.

They said come back.

We said

gonna The next item on the agenda is s six twenty five dash two seven one two b, second amendment district's early retirement incentive and administrative agreement. Is there a presentation? Oh, miss Garr? Oh, can I have a motion to adopt this?

So moved.

Second.

Thank you. Can we have public comment on this item? Yes.

For our public speakers, we have Asolo Lobala and Benjamin Kukluchevik.

If you heard your name called, if you would come to the diocese, please.

This strategy is is good, but it does have its drawbacks. When you take experienced teachers and bring them out of the classroom, we lose. That level of experience is valuable. And then when you replace them with teachers with no experience, you save money but that you lose that highly important experience that you would have had with your retired teachers. So usually, when this happened in the district I worked in, we replaced new teachers with teach for America.

And they came into the classroom with six months of training, not having a true major in the subject matter or in education period. So that this process can potentially reduce the quality of teaching that'll go on in the classroom.

Next speaker, please.

The speaker's name has been called.

And are there any board comments? Okay. Mister I

had a question because some of my constituents have asked, as we just took the last two actions, there is questions from folks around whether or not there could be a possible extension of PARS for folks that may be on the list that are gonna reconsider.

Yes. That's what we were asking for the board to accept and approve the people who have already enrolled in PARS and then also to extend till March 19 to allow others to join in if they'd like.

Great, thank you so much. You're welcome. Really appreciate that.

Thank you.

If there are no more board comments, mister Regstar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes. On the motion to approve the second amendment to the district's early retirement incentive program. Director Barry?

Yes.

K. Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Williams? Yes.

Director Lauder?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor? Yes. President Brewhart?

Yes. The motion's adopted.

And with that, mister Hollis, can we have a interpretation check, please?

Yes, madam president. We still have three languages available, which are Cantonese, Arabic, and Spanish. We'll lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, which at this time, starting with Cantonese. And I will ask miss Ho if she can come off on mute and give the interpretation announcement for Cantonese.

I'll ask mister Yuan if he can come off of mute and give the interpretation announcement for Cantonese.

Thank

you, mister Yuan. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with Cantonese interpretation at this time. Moving forward to the next language, which is Arabic. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom.

Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, at this time is Arabic. And I will ask Ms. Abdi if she could come off of mute and get the interpretation announcement for Arabic.

Thank

you, miss Abdi. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with Arabic interpretation at this time. Moving forward to our last language, which is Spanish. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom.

Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, at this time is Spanish. And I will ask mister Copenhagen if he can come off of mute and get the interpretation announcement for Spanish.

Thank you.

Thank you, mister Copenhagen. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with any interpretation at this time. That concludes our second announcement for languages, and I'll pass it back to you, madam president.

Thank you. At this time, we have item m, is comments from labor partners.

Good evening board, Trish Palenson, SEIU chapter president and library technician in the district. The SEIU bargaining unit is facing 142 position eliminations and 38 position reductions. These cuts are a direct impact to students' rights to a fair education. Many of the cuts will greatly impact immigrant students and families. As these positions, particularly those within the Office of Equity and those working as case managers, they provide essential language access and connect services and resources to students and families.

Initially, we heard the board give direction to keep cuts away from students and school sites. However, the recommendations put forth make it clear this is not, there is not a comprehensive understanding of what each of these positions do and who they serve. Time after time and in quantities, SEIU members are identified for reductions. We are not disposable. We are not the fat that needs trimming.

We are essential, and we provide students with the supports that they need for academic success. We are necessary pillars within the framework of OUSD, and it's time to take a look elsewhere, and perhaps up the org chart, instead of slashing folks who provide essential services. So even though decisions were made, you know, we feel strongly that student facing positions and those who support attendance, safety, and academics should not have been touched. Separate from this, do wanna just appreciate the support from board members for the passage and adoption to ratify the SEIU tentative agreement. It's long overdue, and many of our members have been waiting a long time, and we hope that moving forward, there's an efficient process for the implementation of our new CBA.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Phoebe Nguyen. I am Vice President of SEIU. Unfortunately, two of our members were waiting to speak, and they had to leave. So I'm gonna use this time to read their messages really quickly. I am not David Williams, but I'm reading on behalf of him.

Good evening, members of the board. My name is David Williams. First, I wanna acknowledge the difficult decisions before you. I appreciate your service to our community, and I ask that as you deliberate, you continue to keep the futures of our children at the center of every choice you make. As an Oakland native and proud OUSD grad, I know the immense potential of this district.

To truly support the roughly 35,000 students we serve, we must ensure that they have not only strong instruction, but also support systems that help the most vulnerable Overcome real life barriers to learn. I'm currently I currently serve as a case manager, a role I was recruited into because I saw how chronic absenteeism and unmet needs are holding our students back. The case manager role is a direct investment in student success. Every day, we work with students who face complex challenges outside of school, housing instability, food insecurity, mental health struggles, family crisis, and transportation barriers. These are not issues that disappear at the classroom door.

Without intervention, they become attendance problems, academic struggles, and behavioral concerns. If we eliminate this role, those responsibilities do not disappear. They simply fall into already overextended staff, and our most vulnerable students feel the impact first. Please protect the roles that keep our students connected, engaged, and hopeful about their future. Alright.

And the other one is a noon supervisor. Her name is Donna Jackson, and she also had to leave to take care of a family member that is in medical needs medical help. She also just texted me that she found out that her position has been reduced from six to three hours, and that she's going to lose much needed insurance for her family. Her husband was his back was injured, and now she's the only one that's working. And really quickly, good evening.

My name is Donna Jackson. I have worked as a noon supervisor here at La Esqualeida for five for nearly five years, and I truly love my job. I show up ready to provide the safety and support of students' needs while on the yard and during lunch. I take that responsibility very seriously. I am here for the kids.

They are my priority, and they know it. They come to me when they are hurt, frustrated, or simply need someone to stand beside them. For many students, new supervisors are the adults they see most consistently outside of the classroom. I love the noise of a busy busy school, the quick high fives, and I love being part of this community. That is why it is so difficult to understand the ongoing cuts of student supports while hearing the phrase students first.

We all know it takes a village to raise a child, but that village has to be present on-site every day, building the trust that makes learning possible. I respectfully ask the board to take a close look at the work of noon soup what noon supervisors do. When staffing is stable and adequate, students feel safe, and when students feel safe, they are able to learn, grow, and reach their full potential.

Are there any other comments from our labor partners? And with that, we will move on to public comment. I know there were speakers before, I think on the first item that were not.

For the non agenda item? Yeah. We have a total of 32 speakers.

Thirty two? One minute each.

First five speakers. First five speakers are Kara Fortuna, Jonathan Mates Munchen, David Chow, Erin Branvoyd, and Kim Davis. Those are the first five speakers.

Can folks line up if you're in the room? Is anyone's hand raised on Zoom?

We have one Sheila Haynes but her name hasn't called yet. So five.

Let's go ahead and get Sheila

Sheila. Okay.

On the phone. And then JT, if you wanna make your way over to

Miss Haynes, if you can unmute yourself to speak.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes. Go ahead, miss Heen.

Hi. Thank you. So not providing what our students need is actually an attack on their overall well-being in their life. I I heard the students talking earlier about mental health supports, the arts, and safety, and everyone should be treated fairly and equally and offered the same opportunities. My student needs mental health and desperately needs the arts as an alternative way of learning.

You already took a million from arts education. So it's really a racial injustice also to not have middle school behavior supports. As I mentioned earlier, our black students who are suffering the most with suspensions, it doesn't give them a chance to get better. We're personally the product of trauma that started a decade ago and the district's failure of not providing critical services to our students has created long standing trauma. So I just ask you to please prioritize the needs of our students.

I just pray in our case, some of the effects are reversible, but the time is ticking. It's been six years next month that my student has been learning online. Our children grow into adults really fast, and now is the time for them to get the most help they deserve. Student safety, mental health supports are critical in providing the best chance for these students to develop into adults. And I also continue to ask as part of violence prevention that you not only, make it a zero tolerance of hate speech, but an official ban on all these racial and harmful words to our students.

Keep our students in the most safest spaces. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Haynes. Go ahead, JT.

Hi, JT. Mates Mushin. I'm just gonna follow-up on what Ms. Haynes is talking about now. I just looked at the CD website today because I was looking, just goofing around, looking at school stuff, and I saw that there's a program that's the second annual school leadership to end hate convening in year 2025.

I don't know. I sent you the website and the email. And this is a program that it looks like to me that, you know, you get to send a teacher, a principal, and maybe some other, you know, staff to a program to learn how to stop hate in schools. And this is something that is greatly needed in Oakland. And there are lots of programs, free programs that are available for for groups to come in and help our students learn how to how to be upstanders and how to how how to prevent hate like what miss Haynes was talking about.

Thank you. Have a good night.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening board, I'm speaking on behalf of Kara. Kara is a parent of a seventh grader at Abia and I'm here to speak tonight on the proposed campus relocation to urge the board members to reconsider. I'm speaking as Kara. Our family came to Abia after six years at Urban Montessori, which unfortunately closed last year. As we searched for a new school, Abia stood out immediately.

We were drawn to its project based learning model, its athletic programs, and the opportunity for students to participate in the yearly theater production. What I appreciate most is that the project based approach challenges my daughter challenges my daughter to think critically and take ownership of her education. At the end of the day, our shared goal should be to provide the best possible outcomes for every student. Displacing the BS students by merging them into an already established school would create disruption not only for our children, but for the students already attending that school as well. That that kind of instability has real consequences for learning.

Please reconsider the offer given to be an allow us

to continue at the current campus. Thank you.

Thank you. Next five speakers.

Next five speakers are Mia Friends, Assad Ola Bala, Rafi T, Oliver Brennan, and Miranda Thorman. Those are the next five speakers.

Thank you. We'll take the folks in person and then we'll take the folks online. Go ahead, miss Isada.

Things have happened in this district that need to be discussed and don't get discussed. We needed to have a conversation about the supplemental buses that you make available to certain schools. Skyline is one of the biggest con receivers of those supplemental buses. That is a budgetary item. You just added bus 31, I don't know who pays for that, to Skyline.

Second thing is there's a lot of misrepresentation I hear from the teachers about your newcomer students losing so much. You have 21 staff members administrative to help newcomers. You have newcomer curriculum, you have newcomer schools, you have a wellness initiative for newcomers. This is less than 3,000 students and it's it's being represented that they're being hurt. On the agenda tonight, you have $400,000 for refugee students.

Next speaker.

Good evening, board. Oliver Brennan, parent of two. Financially, COVID saved OUSD. I heard this at a budget and finance meeting in twenty twenty twenty three. We did get one time funds, and we used them.

Attachment a, b, and c, you are correct, vice president, bachelor. They were also $100,000,000 cuts, and they just got us through to the next year each time. But at this second February meeting in each of those years, the numbers showed we were gonna get through into next school year solvent. The 2023 OEA strike resulted in a $70,000,000 contract. And in that year, the school board managed to allow the finances for that to happen.

The one time funds that we used from COVID were always drying up, and our CBO was telling us that from from 2023. As a result of that, the board in August 2024 adopted the three r pros process. It was the way where we wanna pivot, and two of you up on this board tonight on this dais tonight voted against that, and now we're talking about doing things differently. Can you someone tell me at this second board meeting in February, where are the numbers showing we're not gonna certify negative on June 30 this year? Where are they?

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good evening. Mia, unfortunately, had to leave, so I'm gonna be taking her place. My name is Bonita Herrera, and I am the founding staff member at Abia East Bay Innovation Academy. I'm also the proud mom of a sixth grader. Ebya is, I'm also an Oakland native and a product of OUSD.

I am here today to show my support in Ebya's Prop 39 issue. EBS serves twenty nine percent of students with IEPs, my son being one of them. Middle school is a vulnerable and transformative time, filled with rapid physical, social, and emotional, and academic changes. For students with disabilities, stability is not just helpful, it's essential. It creates safety, reduces anxiety, and allows students to build trust, confidence, and academic progress during one of the most critical stages of their development.

My son was diagnosed with a speech delay at age four. For years, we struggled to get access to services at school, often feeling like he was playing catch up. Choosing a BIA for middle school was easy. It was a community I helped build and one that had helped my child feel seen, supportive, and capable. I respectfully ask that you reconsider disrupting our stability.

Our community has worked so hard to create. Twelve years, we have called to 3400 Malcolm Avenue home. Please don't disrupt that.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, trustees and superintendent Sadler. My name is Miranda Thorman, and I'm the executive director of East Bay Innovation Academy. Like Oakland Unified, EBIEA is committed to meeting the needs of all students while being fiscally responsible. Tonight, the board is approving two facilities agreements that allow other public charter schools to remain in their current buildings. We appreciate the district's recognition that stability matters for students and that minimizing disruption is often the most responsible choice.

We are asking for the same consideration for Abia. At a time when we should be focused on collaborative solutions, moving Abia to a colocated site where there is no plan on the site that we are leaving would be unnecessarily disruptive. This proposal would affect hundreds of students and families across two school communities and has no clear educational benefit. For the last twelve years, EBI has called 3400 Malcolm Avenue home. During that time, this partnership has generated more than 1 and a half million dollars for OUSD and has kept a facility in active use rather than sitting vacant and falling into disrepair.

We believe this has been a strong and mutually beneficial relationship. We ask that you allow us to have the same stability you granted to others tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Can we get the next five speakers?

Next five speakers are Erin O, Bonita Herrera, Jessica C, Antoine Monroe, and Sarah Blair.

Good evening board members. My name is Erin and I teach special education at East Bay Innovation Academies Middle School. I am also the parent of two OUSD students and the acting president of our union at East Bay Innovation Academy. You might not know this, but we have over 50 students at the middle school receiving special education services through IEPs. And we've received a lot of recommendations for our program through community partners like Fred Finch or UCSF.

And so I really think that we're a unique program in that we actively contribute to the district. We give more than we take. This program, it's so important to keep this program at the facility it's in. It's inclusive. We focus on project based learning, and I would just really ask that you not uproot this program and move it over to Bret I really encourage you to reconsider the Bret Hart offer, not only to provide consistency to all students, but also just to continue the great work that we're doing.

We invite any of you to come visit and see what we're doing in action. So thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello school board members. My name is Jessica. I'm a parent at I have a son who is in sixth grade. I'm here today because I would like the board to reconsider the proposal to relocate Ibia. When I began looking for a middle school for my son, my goal was to find a school where my son felt comfortable.

My son has an IEP and stripes, sorry, an IEP and stripes with structure and routine. At the previous school where my son was at, my son was failing, coming home with once on his report card that I had even asked for them to hold him back since my son started going to IBA. My son has blossomed. He is excited about school now and it's motivated to do well. The environment that Evia provides fosters that.

The teachers are kind, the class sizes are just right for my son to feel included and get the support they need. Like I mentioned before, students with IEPs like my son strive with structure and a routine and proposing to move Ibia disrupts that. Disrupting this environment is not in the best interest of students because it disrupts their learning. We are respectfully asking the board to reconsider the proposal to relocate Ibia and keep us at our current campus. Thanks.

Thank you. And I would also like to thank the young people that are helping us put the chairs up. Let's give them a round of applause. Thank you. Alright.

Next speaker.

Good evening board members. I'm speaking on behalf of on behalf of Antoine who unfortunately had to go to work. Good evening board trustees and members. My name is Antoine and I am a parent of a sixth grader at Abia. I am a proud East Oakland native and a product of OUSD's district.

So I know firsthand what it means to grow up in this community and navigate its challenges. Growing up within OUSD, it was difficult to focus on academics when safety and other outside pressures constantly competed for our attention. That is why finding the right environment for my child has been so important to me. My student receives speech therapy and participates in social groups twice a week, and at Abeya, my son has been excelling. That progress does not happen by accident, it happens because of the stability, safety, and supportive school community.

We should be fostering and protecting schools that are clearly working for their students. Proposing that Abia move to a shared campus would disrupt that. Uprooting students, some of whom may struggle to adapt to an entirely new environment, puts unnecessary barriers in ways of their success. If what we have going on at Abia is working, why are we trying to change it? We are respectfully asking the board to reconsider the proposal to relocate Abia.

Thank you so much.

Next speaker.

Good evening board, trustees, and members. My name is Sarah Blair and I teach science at East Bay Innovation Academy Middle School, and I'm here today because I would like for the board to reconsider their proposal to relocate Ibea. Specifically, and in addition to what many of my colleagues and community members have said, I want to highlight the needs of our seventh grade students. Forty three percent of our seventh graders have an IEP or a five zero four plan. And I've looped with this group of students, teaching them for two years now.

Their growth since sixth grade has been exponential. Students who responded with, I don't know, to every question at the beginning of sixth grade are now engaging in rigorous academic content. And the small campus and staff provides this safe and trusted learning environment for these students. Keeping a BIA at 3400 Malcolm Avenue ensures this consistency and stability for them. Please reconsider the offer to move our school to Bret Hart.

It would not be in the best interest of our students, social, emotional, or academic achievement. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Let's get the next five speakers.

Next five speakers are Tanya Kapler, Adrienne Hogue, Judy Greenspan, Michelle Jeter, Krishna South. Those are the next five speakers.

Oh, I apologize. I didn't ask for the folks on Zoom. Is there anybody that's raised their hand on Zoom that has those names or the names that were called before then?

No, those are not a registered speaker for this current item.

I don't see anyone coming up with those five names. So let's get to the next five names.

Next five names are Niom Niom M, Craig Gordon, Elise Yu, Brandon Wall, and Juana Pena. Those are the next five speakers.

Great, can folks come up that were called? Don't see anybody coming up but I know there's a transition moment happening and a board director speaking to the public off the dais. Brandon Wall I think was one of the names that was called. Okay. Let's get to the next five.

Next five for Mara McMichael, David Williams, Phoebe Nguyen, and Donna Jackson. And also David Chow Anybody

have their hand raised on Zoom?

Yes, I see Lina Pena.

Great. Let's go ahead and take those names.

If you could unmute yourselves to speak.

Good evening. My name is Juana and I am a very proud parent with the third grader, a parent leader, a new supervisor, which my position is always also on the list of cuts, and the active member of the CELS, DELF, SFC, and CLP at International Community School. I'm here to express my strong support for our select Gonzalez. Our district family engagement specialist for network two in the office of equality, which is on the list of cuts. I respectfully ask that you do everything possible to keep her in our school and within all USD.

Arcele Gonzalez played a very important role at our daughter's school. Our school will not be the same without her. She brings valuable information to both the school and the parents, and she is always willing to help. Over the past three years, I have had the opportunity to get to know her, and I have learned so much about the school and what we, as parents, can do to better support our children and our school community. She takes the time to explain things clearly and make sure families feel heard and supported because of her guidance and many of our parents have been able to understand school policies, district updates and important processes that direct impact our children and our school.

I'd say that is knowledgeable, dedicated and truly care about our students and families. Please reconsider the impact. Please consider the impact our school will face if she is no longer working in the district in our school. Our students, families, and staff benefit greatly from her presence in our our schools. Please vote no on any cuts made to our school.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next round of speakers.

All speakers name has been called. And All I do speakers names see have

been called at this time. So we're going to move to item T1, which is new business item.

David Chow.

Oh, what what was your name, ma'am? Oh, Come on. And you Brandon Wall, right? Yeah. Okay.

Thanks. Can you reset the thanks. My name is Catherine Camp. I'm a Glenview Elementary parent. The stabilization strategy on the table leans hard on 10% cuts to school sites and a 10% cut to sped.

We are losing CSMs, TSAs, nurses, and other vital members of our schools. These actions will only exacerbate inequities and cripple our communities. Plus, the way these cuts are presented as opaque and confusing. We see percentages, not a clear list of which programs and supports are actually on the chopping block. Without that specificity, families, educators, PSAC, and site councils cannot crowdsource real alternatives or help solve this problem.

We're kept in the dark and told to trust a process that has already broken trust. The district's approach does not provide transparency nor does it lay out a long term road map for staying out of receivership. It only kicks the can to the next $100,000,000 crisis. You need to rebuild the public's trust, and we need concrete steps now. Rethink the 10% cuts to school sites and sped.

Aggressively lobby the state for prop 98 funds that rightfully belong to OUSD. Implement a plan for the vacant properties for revenue generation and workforce housing. Publish a transparent program list of cuts by school, and partner with PSAC site councils and unions to propose public alternatives to monitor this plan, adjust course, and finally break this cycle that's hurting our students and communities.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Last speaker.

Hi. My name is Brandon Wall. I'm a parent of four OUSD kids. And real talk, obviously, like, this is, like, a terrible night. Like, this is a terrible process.

Like, I know that I can see the pain on your faces. Like, this sucks. Like, this is absolutely terrible. I I think the thing that that, like, I'm most worried about is we're not accepting all the help that we can get, and we're not talking to each other. Right?

I mean, the fact that we have so many four three votes all over the place, the fact that, like, we saw, Elise Castro here in December 2024. She was invited back in February 2025, and we haven't seen her since then. But I know she and her team at ACOE would love to provide more guidance, provide some more support. There's FICMEC, there's others. This is not the first time.

You don't have to do this alone. We need to do this together. I know it's hard on you guys a little bit, but I also really believe that there's so much that's great that's going on. The early literacy progress we've made in the last five years, so different from my oldest to my youngest kid. And there's great stuff happening every day in this district.

So please keep trying. Don't know why this isn't working, but I'm confident that we can get there.

Thank you. Alright, that wraps up Q, which is public comments on non agenda items. And now we're on to t, which is new business. T one twenty Yep. Those so we're on t now, everybody.

So just if we're if you're following along, we're gonna do t, then o, then p, and then the rest of the agenda. I know we switched things around a little bit. So this is t dot dash one twenty six dash zero four five three twenty twenty four twenty twenty seven LCAP or Local Control and Accountability Plan. Mid year update by the Chief Academic Officer, Director Sandra Aguilera. And I believe there's a presentation.

There is no presentation. Is there a motion to adopt? There's no motion to adopt? Wonderful.

Speak. Evening, board directors, staff and community. This evening, Diana Sherman, our LCAP coordinator, I are submitting for your review the LCAP mid year report. The mid year report is the function is to give you updates on our metrics for each of the goal areas thus far in the school year. Additionally, it is also giving you an update as to our expenditures.

So you will see the different line items and how much has been spent in each of the goal areas. So we must give you this report every year before March 1. So we are presenting this information for you. If you may have any questions, you can email or call Diana Sherman or myself, and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll head to public comment before we do board comments. That's okay, colleagues. So it sounds like we have five public commenters. Can we get those names, mister Cechow, and we'll do two minutes each since we have ten minutes on this item.

Know that those speakers are Asado Lavalin, Brandon Wall, Diane L, Anna Rialini, and Christian Hernandez. Also there's another addition, Jonathan Mates.

Great, thank you. Come on up everybody. If your name was called, please come on up. No particular order, go ahead. You got two minutes.

Alright. Hello board. Thank you for the work that you're doing. I wanted to speak on this item because it's about our LCAP and the core work that I think our schools do or should do about teaching and learning and how we're how we're measuring our effectiveness. How we're seeing, reflecting on what we're doing.

And those are the kinds that's the kind of data that should be informing what we're doing and what we're doing differently. Not just because we're at this February deadline that we're making cuts to stay alive, but we need to be thoughtful about what we're doing and how we're spending our money so that our kids can actually thrive. So I want to thank Doctor. Aguilera and Diana Sherman for all the work that they're doing on that. And I just want to make a point that it's so telling that we're not even discussing it.

So maybe it's just because it's great and we're happy and everything's fine, which I hope it is. But that has got to be some of the core work that we're doing. We are here to make sure that our babies are learning to be critical thinkers, that they can read, that they can do math enough to understand and make choices in the future. Real quick, I'm Kirsten Hernandez. Forgot.

I'm the parent of three OUSD students, two of which are teenagers. As a former middle school and high school teacher, and I'm parent of two teens, I am used to people saying crazy things and I can not take it personally. But some of what I'm hearing from the dais and some of what I'm hearing from our our OEA leadership just feels insulting. It's half truths and it's it's there's a group of parents that are really interested in the details. Some of the questions that doctor or that director Barry is asking, we're asking too, we're looking at numbers.

We wanna know. We The budget is our values, enacted. And so I would love, love, love to be part of this process, but Lord knows we just don't even have a process yet. So I hope that we'll start planning for some process that will include a lot of community input.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker. Hi

JT, Mates Mushin. I was also very interested in the presentation. I thought Doctor. Augetler was going to give a little summary so I got caught off guard. I reviewed it.

It's very complicated and being on PSAC for my second year and just trying to really understand like, what our children need and, like, the needs of all children. Again, I, like, for the first time, sat in a Foster Youth Advisory Committee meeting last night and my, you know, mind was absolutely blown. And I know that the the goals, we we need to, you know, redo them this year for next year or not redo them, but, like, you know, address them. And, you know, I look at some of the metrics and I I I know that we're doing better, but I just don't feel like we're doing better enough. And I think the speaker before me said it very well.

And so I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, everyone. I'm Anna Raelini. I'm on the CAC. And I think everything I was gonna say isn't relevant anymore. We know that decimating staff and slicing central leads our schools unable to ensure our children are safe and literate and seen, especially our disabled students, our black and brown students.

We all know that. So nobody's here anymore. But in case people are listening, I just really wanna call on everyone in this room to dramatically change our approach, abandon the vitriol, the divisiveness, the untruths. We need to collaborate. Nothing any one of us can say at this point matters.

What matters is that we're all so separated. I want my two disabled students to be supported. I believe everyone here deeply cares for our children, believes in equity, and wants OUSD to thrive, but we can't do it this way, everyone. We're Oakland. I mean, we're innovative.

We're diverse. We're progressive, we're capable, we stand on a legacy of leadership and activism, and we're basically all on the same page. So we're mirroring our broken country right now, and we're failing our values. We're I stand united with our teachers. Our they are our blood, our body, our soul of our schools.

They have to have living wages. But also, the willful chronic dissemination of misinformation and entrenched opposition to reality is really scary. And, also, let's stop stop blaming this board leadership for what they inherited and for walking their beliefs. Seating a new board every two years is not gonna solve this. And at the same time, leadership, us progressives, it's hard to make hard decisions.

It's hard to be transparent. It took too long to get here. I'm kind of proud of you for doing it tonight even though it's so horrible, and it's gonna but I'm proud of you. And so before everyone stands here and blames everyone else, before we blow up every conversation, before we strike, let's propose ideas that will work. Stop saying what isn't gonna work.

Get up here. Give us ideas. Ask each other, how can we work together? I don't know. Let's move forward.

Let's collaborate with dignity and respect.

Thank you.

And be affirmative. So sorry, I didn't say any of what I meant to say, but I love you all. Let's all work together, please.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Sorry, it's me again. So like, you know, we've made a lot of progress actually on academic outcomes. Like our high schools are wildly better than they were twenty years ago. Like the college and career pathways stuff, the measure NNH and stuff, all that stuff has been great. Many of our middle schools are really thriving, many of our elementary schools.

But we need to be doing more, right? One third of the kids in this district read on grade level. My kids are in that one third. One out of seven black and brown kids are reading on grade level. We can't do anything else until we solve that problem.

And so we need laser focus on guaranteed literacy, like every kid reading, every kid reading and loving and learning to read. One thing that is great is actually, I had been on a school site council for about four years, like four years ago, and I was looking at a SPSA the other day, and it actually looks quite different than it did one that I remembered, right? I mean, so there is stuff on percentage of kids that are making annual progress, and kindergartens getting letter ID over the course of the year and stuff like that. So there is progress, but we need to be doing it more, right? Like how much of these board meetings has been obsessed with the very big, impossible project of solving this district's finances, obviously a lot, but for us to be talking about student outcomes, for us to be talking about teaching and learning only on the edges and only late at night when the room's empty is not the right approach.

We need to be doing more on that because what gets measured gets done and also what gets paid attention to gets done. And so I wanna see Doctor. Sadler telling us about how things are going in our elementary schools, like telling us about where things are going well, like what we need to do better, because that's what tells the adults that they need to sort of change kind of where the focus is. Unfortunately, when we feel like there's like just a million fires, whether it be budget or something else or an actual fire, sometimes it feels like we don't make time, but we just have to make time and space for talking about students and how we're gonna get them where they need to go, because we all know that's why we're all here. Thanks.

You. Miss Asada?

Unfortunately, I have to say this. People get up here and talk about we are diverse city. We're not diverse. We're very segregated. Our churches are segregated, our neighborhoods are segregated, our schools are segregated and that diversity theme doesn't exist.

Secondly, LCAP does not give us an opportunity to deal with the needs and concerns of African American students. And I heard people coming up here, are sanctuary city. We are Sanctuary City. Sanctuary City means that you will not abide by the federal government's, call for illegal immigrants not to be able to stay in this country. So y'all say, no, we're not gonna follow that rule.

We're not gonna follow that law. You didn't follow the California constitution when it said that you have to be 18 to vote. No, we're gonna be we're gonna vote when we're 16. So this is what I'm gonna tell y'all. Don't follow proposition two zero nine.

You are willing to defy law. So I'm telling you to defy two zero nine and do whatever you do with LCAP, do it for black students. And don't tell me again we can't do anything related to black students because of Proposition two zero nine because you are in a position of saying we when we decide to we will not follow federal law, we won't follow the state law. So I have the expectation that as soon as possible you're going to start working on accommodating the needs of these African American students and people get up here and talk about how great we are improving. You're not improving for black kids.

I didn't get one person come up here and talk about black children besides myself. The union said something about, you're not gonna close students. It's gonna hurt black kids. I never heard when they signed their last contract, they agreed that you had to do something to help newcomers. They never put in the arrangements for what you had to do.

It's that you had to help black children. That wasn't in their demands in their last contract.

Thank you. Any board comments? I can go down the line. Director Barry?

Yeah. I will follow-up with doctor Aguilera because I do did find the presentation interesting. I saw a lot of very encouraging signs of growth and then also areas that we definitely can spend more time thinking and talking and planning around. So I just wanted to, I remember before all this budget stuff you used to have constantly this kind of data in your reports and we would engage with it. So I look forward to the moment when this part of the process makes it such that we can spend more time on that again in the future.

So I do wanna heed the call that we do have to put in on the agenda, but I know that that is a priority of yours and I look forward to that. Thank you. Director Lotta?

Yeah, I also am planning to follow-up with Doctor. Aguilera and Diana Sherman with a couple of updates. But I wanted to just raise up that for people who want to engage more on the LCAP mid year update, it is going to be on the agenda for the next week's budget and finance meeting. I think the few things that are, I mean I think overall there's been huge reductions in chronic absenteeism in the time of the LCAP, which I think is very encouraging. There are of course other areas that are making much more slow progress, and in some places that are backsliding.

The place there's two, I would say, kind of fundamental questions I have about our LCAP. The first and, you know, I think I would just wanna also raise up the folks who are on PSAC, who I lift up the concerns that they that they have brought up, which is, one, the LCAP is very rigidly defined in our district. And I am always curious about how the work we're doing and on other fund sources and other with other monies is accounted for within the LCAP. And so I, you know, I just wonder how we can talk about that more and include it. I think the second thing is that we, the updates are very data driven.

We're really driven on outcomes and the measurements. And what I would like to understand better from, especially from a perspective of budget and being efficient is we have some key performance indicators, but I don't know what investments are driving those. What are the things, the programs, the positions that are actually moving the needle? Because that is how we make better decisions about what we protect and what we invest in. And that, I think, is the thing that I am going to continue to ask about.

And then finally, I think the other piece is that we do in terms of the work that we need to do to make our LCAP really live, is to not just And I will just say, know, as somebody who often does show up at PSAC meetings or CAC meetings, is that we Those parents and students and community members go through a really rigorous process to come up with really deep questions about that work that we historically have not answered very well as a district. And so I do think as we're thinking about next steps is that we should engage with those questions that that those committees have come up with to inform the way our district looks moving forward. Thanks.

Director Thompson.

Yes. Somewhat, tangential to what my colleague, director Lada, was mentioning. As we look at the specific areas, such as meeting the a to g completion rate, such as looking at being involved in pathways, looking at advanced academic and advanced achievement tests that are taken, looking at the FAFSA, helping students with the FAFSA. I think all of those things are going to help us sort of narrow our perspective so that we can identify the kinds of things that we need to do in order to cause students to advance their academic growth. And so I'm excited that those points were actually codified, in the LCAP.

And, of course, I can't leave out absenteeism because we know that there is such a difference between enrollment and attendance. And so we want to increase, and I'm I'm glad that that was actually codified also in this document that we want to increase the attendance of our students. And so finding ways to do that, all the things that I've mentioned, finding those ways, I think, is a great and I wanna thank you, doctor Adeleva, for Ashley and and miss Sherman for putting those things together and putting your heads together and saying, we need to make sure that we do these things and also fund these particular activities in order to create or create the an increased academic prowess of all of our students.

Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. And I agree, sister Asada, with the number of laws I see being broken, let's just break two zero nine as one of them. It really feels like I'm living in a bizarro world up here. To hear directors talk about what we historically have done, and I don't know what people mean by we. I know how long I've been sitting in these meetings and my attendance across the city.

I know who was in those rooms with me or who were at these meetings. And so people are really loose with how they use we and how they use historically. Even just in this presentation we just saw, you know, this should have been some of the information that was informing the fiscal solvency plan that we never developed and haven't voted on. Understanding our investments and how that funds outcomes and how we structure staffing to support it. That's the work we were supposed to be doing for the last six months to inform a fiscal solvency plan.

To hear people wax poetic about attendance knowing people just voted to cut attendance clerks. People talking about how, strong the pathways work has been to produce improvements. We just cut people from the linked learning office. On this presentation now, where was any information to show the impact of the cuts and staffing that were just made were going to impact what we just saw in the LCAP plan? Where's the anger from the PSAC committee who developed the LCAP that again for at least the third year in a row, their work is just being thrown out.

Nobody pays attention because they just made budget cuts not even considering that work. How can we legitimately talk about raising academic outcomes when we watch third grade math being demonstrated here from the board? When we see reports being put forward on our budget that I wouldn't accept from a fifth grader. No dollar amounts, no labeling, no justification, no line of thought. And one of the reasons why people like to wax poetic on something like this is because it doesn't matter and they can just say whatever they want and think they're sounding smart.

But tonight, we again failed to pass a fiscal solvency plan. It's time up. Those cuts that were approved, not only was that offensive, not only could we never amend them at this last minute, but it still doesn't add up to the amount that we need. And these folks think that that's on a free up just enough money so they can legally offer a raise to a union when we know that's not the case. And just wait till you see what these folks are about to try to do next.

Thank you.

President Burhard?

Yes. Thank you. I appreciated the LCAP update. And I was actually gonna suggest, I know we've done this before, but that we go through some of these metrics in the teaching and learning, and I know I'm not the chair of the teaching and learning, I don't wanna speak for him. But I did have some, there were some gains, but also I I and I know it's it's midway through the year.

I had a couple of questions of things that kind of were flat, but also the targeted growth for next year seemed to be really big. So I think I was looking at the just as an example, the increase of sped students employed one year after graduation, had a a rate right now. It went down 3%, which is kind of staying the same in some ways. But it has a targeted growth rate of 90% next year. And I just I was thinking again in teaching and learning.

Could we take some of those where we have the a larger growth rate, anticipated to kind of talk through how we see getting there. And then I, you know, again looking at the AP rate, which I think was a little bit higher. And also wondering if we should add dual enrollment as well, since I know that many of our schools are moving more towards towards dual enrollment. And I appreciate it. It took me a little minute to find the thought it was interesting comparing the budget, you know, where things were overspent or underspent, and just again, we'll be having a discussion about how how those expenditures there was a little bit on the second slide after each one of those, but maybe a little bit more just to see again, because I thought they did balance out.

So, I mean, I thought And then it was interesting in the supply the questions that were I and I'm sure if the principal's one came from the checks. I don't I wasn't sure what they took. But, again, kind of what seemed to be a thread for both principal and teacher satisfaction was feeling supported. So, it seemed to go down a little bit, so again, maybe we could look at some of that data as well. But, I was discussing it both in budget and finance and in teaching and learning would be a helpful way, I think, to make the LCAP a document that we live by.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, I appreciate the information about the LCAP. This is not a voting item, so unless there are any further comments, we can move on to the next item. Thank you so much, Director Aguilera, for that. Next item is T2206-two 49, And this comes out of the budget and finance committee.

So is there a motion to accept this item before we can speak about it?

So moved.

I'll second it.

Adopt before adoption. So I heard a first and a second spontaneously.

Yes.

And Director Alotta, would you like to talk a little bit about this item since it comes out of your committee?

Yeah, so I So this amendment to Board Policy 03/2012, contracts and delegation of authority, is And grows out of the work from the ad hoc task force to reduce outsourcing. The one of the areas that we identified as a challenge for reducing our contracting out and also for ensuring that we are paying similar amounts for similar services, was that our current board policy had areas that made us less efficient in number of ways, and also did not provide strong enough guardrails against outsourcing work that's traditionally done by permanent employees of the district. And so this board policy amendment does a couple of things. It changes a few items that are more in line with the California School Boards Association model policy. It also reduces the number of delegates in the district who are able to initiate contract work on their own.

So many people, myself included and in the community, have lamented the fact that our consent agendas have many items of which many come late. Meaning that the work has already started and in some cases has been completed. And that was because many people, principals, department heads, and all the way up, know, our superintendent had the ability to initiate contracts without board oversight. And so contracts would come for ratification, meaning that the contract that money was already spent. And so we had very little ability to control that spending and assess it.

So this policy go does not go as far as the CSBA model policy, which only allows the superintendent to initiate contracts. This is somewhat of a compromise, and so all of the chiefs, so our chief academic officer, our chief of staff, our legal counsel, chief systems and services officer, our chief financial officer, are all still retain the delegated authority. But this will help bring us, enable us to have more control over the contracts that we bring before the board. And then it also strengthens the procurement process so that we are competitively bidding and moving towards master contracts for efficiencies. And then the last piece is around the previous policy only referenced classified positions, and so this takes the classified positions out.

And so it will only it will imply to any work traditionally done by a district employee. And then the subsequent administrative regulation will further that work for implementation.

Thank you. Public comment on this agenda item.

Yes, we have Kim Davis, Jonathan Mates Munchen, and Asalo Lobala.

I see two of the three. Come on up everybody, one minute. And is Ms. Davis online?

I do not see Ms. Davis at the moment. Okay.

I wish I would have heard some of the discussion from Budget and Finance because I just I look at some of the items that are in this resolution, and I'd I'd have a little pause about, like, what are we actually doing now, for our contracts and why do we need this? Because, I mean, I get it that we're trying to, you know, rein in our contracts and our budget, but, like, this some of this stuff seems like really no brainer type things that I don't think that we need for this district to function. Thank you.

Thank you. Miss Asada?

When we are we gonna amend the practice of approving contracts that have already started and you approve them tonight. You do it every meeting. There is no legitimacy to anything that you're gonna be doing around contracts as far as corrective action until you stop this practice when you get to the consent agenda and you go through the rubber stamping of contracts that already have, in some cases, coming to an end and you approving them. Until you get to this point of having contracts in front of you, you officially approve them and then they begin on a date after your approval. There's no legitimacy going on regardless of any discussion around how you're gonna amend the contracting system or process until you fix that.

Last time to see if miss Davis is online And has her hand raised?

No. That concludes, public speakers.

Okay. Board colleagues, any comments? I'll start with director Thompson this time. Shake it up. Alright.

Director Lotta. The only comment I would

like to make, and this is a little bit to Ms. Olabella's point, which is that the next step I know is the updating the administrative regulation. So I would like to request board president that we agendize that updated AR. And I think, know, I think doctor Sadler, whether that's the end, know, two board meetings from now, the last board meeting in March. I think I would defer to you when, but I would like it to be agendized, that report, to clarify the next steps.

Thank Absolutely,

director Lotta. For all policy that said, it is really that we have an AR, and that's something that I really want to work on in terms of changing the culture around that so that it is appropriate, recommendations that are adopted by the board that are presented, that we need to have very specific process in terms of implementation of that policy. So I I suspect that we should be able to get that done. Working closely, on this, I think realistically, April would be the time prepared to do that given all the other assignments that we have. But it is definitely something that I think will will be is in progress and something that we've discussed and we're in process.

Madam president, the board's gonna have to change its by, the board bylaw on policies in order to stop and start adopting administrative regulations because that policy currently delegates administrative regulation formulation to the superintendent exclusively, which is a method to implement the board policy. And so the last time that when the when the board when the district switched over to the CSBA model policies, that was what was adopted by the board, and that's still on the books. So you will have to amend policy to allow you to approve administrative regulations with few exceptions.

Yes. I'm I'm aware of that, mister Registrar. I was I was just requesting a report back so that the board would see the AR, which I think is acceptable, not for approval.

Thank you for that clarification everybody. Moving to Director Williams.

Just wanna thank director Lotta for moving this forward. I think it's a step in the right direction. As we are talking about, you know, taking a look at our spending, we we have our staff who are working two or three jobs. And I think there are opportunities where work that is being contracted out can actually be presented to our in house staff to do that work. I don't think that we should overlook our staff who who is the backbone of our school district and this is a great opportunity to have our labor partners, our staff be part of growing our district as we move forward.

We know in the last five years, our district spending has increased on outside contracts and consultants by over a 123%. And we went from, you know, 90,000,000 to $215,000,000. A lot of that money could go towards our employees, our staff who are doing a fabulous job if given the chance. So I'd say this particular policy has given them a chance to continue to contribute and work for our district all the way through ending in, and maybe they don't need to take a second or third job. Thank you again, director Lada, for, working with labor partners to move this forward.

Director Barry? I was just gonna say I'm surprised you didn't mention any sort of, like, anticipated reduction in sort of, like, cost to the district by implementing this as a part of a set of other strategies. You don't have to speak to it, but that that is what one of the things in budget and finance, that I was eager about in this regard.

Thank you. Director Brohard? Yeah. I'd just like to echo Director Williams in thanking you for taking this on and working with community to build it. And then seeing it to fruition coming tonight and supporting it.

I also just want to acknowledge one of the public speakers in saying like, these look like common sense solutions. Why do we need them? We haven't had them. So I'm very excited to see that they're implemented. I'm interested in seeing what the administrative regulations are going to look like so that we can actually make it functional.

And to Director Barry's point to get savings so that we can continue the good work and to Director Williams's point, hire staff within our district to, you know, for the long term. So I think all of these things are working together and this is yet another way that we are trying to do something different to make sure that we are have a budget for the long term. And again, this isn't sexy work, this isn't fun work, but this is necessary work. And I really appreciate you and the team for taking this on. I know SCIU folks were a part of it, all of our labor partners were a part of it, because again, and our community members were also a part of it, because again, it really touches all parts of our district.

And so making sure that that happens. With all of that, any other comments? Okay. We'll just go ahead and move to a vote.

On the roll call to adopt the amendment of board policy three three one two, contracts and delegation of authority. Due to directors who are absent, director Lauder?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Batchelor?

Yes.

And president ProHeart?

Yes.

Alright. Motion's adopted.

We don't do a lot of six ones, so there we go. Alright. Oh, six zero. Thank you board colleagues. Thank you.

Thank you, friends. Alright. Unanimous, we'll say, for the folks that were here. Okay. So the next one is T326Dash0266.

Is there a motion to bring this?

Yes. I motion that we bring this TDotDash3 to the board for.

A second. For adoption. Yes. Yes. All right.

So there's a first and a second. Public comment on, director Brohardt, public comment on this agenda item, Mr. Sechow.

There is no registered speaker for this current item.

Oh, Wow. Alright. I just wanna take that moment for a minute. Okay. Board colleagues, I'm gonna start with director Barry.

Comments? Nope. Okay. Williams. K.

Lada, Thompson, Brohard. Yes. Let's go. Okay. Let's go ahead and take a vote.

Okay. Student directors are absent. Director Lada?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson is absent. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

And president ProHeart?

Yes.

Motion's adopted.

Okay. Alright. Community, please join us in adopting the general consent report. We're now at o. Is there a motion to adopt the general consent report?

Yes. I move to adopt o.

Second. Alright. Mister Sechow, public comment.

Yes. We have Asado Olabala.

I'm sorry. We'll go ahead and do two minutes.

Two minutes? Yeah.

If you read o 13, it involves improving attendance data for up to 49 elementary schools and what you're going to be doing with this item is helping to remove attendance errors and improve recording of attendance. Now how are you gonna do that if you're getting rid of attendance personnel? O 17 office of equity for Skyline equity and hip hop grant. Somebody's gotta tell me how you get equity by having participation in hip hop. And this is a grant that is started already.

O '22, tutoring I'm sorry. You're taking, black children to black historical colleges. How can you prepare children who are African American to go to black historical colleges when you give them no support within your school district? O twenty three, four hundred thousand dollars to support refugees with academic, social, emotional and integrated needs. When are you gonna have that balance of giving the same support to African American students?

Do whatever you want to support groups, but you got to support the African American children as well. I'm sorry, O31. This is good because you're approving the OSUD graduates will be guaranteed guaranteed the opportunity to be admitted into CSU schools and that's very good. The grant for Skyline and the grant for Fremont for apprenticeship pilot program, that's great. There's nothing on the agenda for consent that has anything to do to uplift the students at McClellan's, not one thing.

Thank you. Board colleagues, I'll start with director Hutchinson.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm gonna be continuing the pattern that I've been doing since April now of not voting for a consent report because I have no faith in the people who put together the reports. And, Asada, thank you for lifting that up. It's a it's a pitiful way we're coming to the end of Black History Month here in OUSD.

See, amazing the amount of talk that, I've heard from the board over the last year about wanting to cut contracts and cut contractors and cut consultants. Yet, every consent report, there's more money voted out the door. Two, now our financial services have been outsourced to consultants that are getting paid $400 an hour while we're still paying the salary of past employees. And tonight, again, we were supposed to pass an implementation plan for fiscal solvency, and there wasn't even a vote because a plan doesn't even exist. Yet, people are gonna vote.

All of these contracts and the consent report out the door. You know, tonight, OEA is talking about striking any day, and OEA didn't even speak in their union time. I've never seen that happen before. Why are they not upset? Is it because there's some sort of arrangement that's already been made?

Why are they not upset with the directors they claim that are their own who just voted to cut a 180 OEA positions during bargaining before they're going to strike? There's not anyone here to say anything about it? But I already got the email they sent out to their members during this meeting talking about what they're going to do tomorrow. I at a certain point, the activity that's been going on because it involves public dollars, public facilities, and our public education system, there actually are real laws that apply. And just because nobody's been called out on it yet, just because attorney general Rob Bonta seems to not be concerned just like his wife or assembly member is not concerned, doesn't mean there hasn't been illegal activity happening over and over and over again.

There's Ed Code, there's state laws, and there's a process for how we're supposed to operate. That's all been violated. And I said people wanna talk about what they think people did five years ago. But what they won't do is address the actual situation. Approving a consent report every meeting with no changes, no difference than what's happened any other year while we're in this crisis that continues to grow should show people exactly what's going on.

This isn't even hard y'all. And so when are we as a community, don't I say enough is enough? Hold people accountable and demand either they do their job or they get out of our way because I won't stand by quietly and let anyone destroy my school district. Thank you.

Director Thompson, director Lada, director William, Director Barry. Director Brohard. Okay. With that, let's go ahead and take a vote on o, which is the

The motion to adopt the consent agenda, general consent agenda, in general. Director Lauder?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson?

Abstain.

Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor? Yes. President ProHeart?

Yes. Motion's adopted.

Great. Now we're at p

for the community that's still listening

in. That is the adoption of general consent report, general obligation bonds, measure b, j, and y. Is there a motion to adopt this item?

I move that we adopt this item, adopt item, consent item P.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Are there public comments on this item?

Yes, we have Asado Labala.

Okay.

Go ahead, miss Asado. One minute.

P one is extra plumbing repair for at 51 schools. Now, you've had previously on the agenda, to reduce plumbing repairs at McClyman schools and other schools. So you are you're giving extra plumbing to 51 schools, and on other agenda items, you're taking funding for plumbing away. P two, 39 new security cameras for certain schools. Two schools?

39 cameras? I don't know. And, I just don't understand how you're doing this. And at Skyline, you still haven't been able to fence in that whole area and it's lack of security exists. P three, turf field.

Everybody's getting a turf field except McClyman's. McClyman's Turf field is not a part of the modernization process. That was a separate funding area. You could have held up the modernization. There was no reason to hold up the turf replacement except you don't want to remediate the soil contamination issue.

You don't want to remediate and you want children to be on a field with lead and PCB coming out of the soil. So you continue to not do anything at McClellan's. You say it's going to start in March. It was supposed to start last summer. Mister Williams, it started that there's no excuse for why rational reasoning why it didn't start on time.

Okay. Alright. Disrespect for black people again. You don't have to give a reason. But if it was some newcomer student, oh, y'all would be jumping through hopes to get it fixed.

I'm not talking to you mister Williams. I'm talking to the collective. Okay? So here we go. You think because you started the project and you didn't do it on time and you didn't you're not doing it right, that's that's supposed to be satisfactory?

Thank you.

Board comments on this agenda item. I'll start with director Barry, director Williams, director Lada Thompson, director Hutchinson.

Thank you. And thank you, Asada, for bringing that up again. You know, the McClymans turf replacement was supposed to happen in the summer along with Oakland High and the Cesar Chavez campus. There's only one of those threes that isn't of three campuses that is not completed right now. You know, the construction at McClyman's High was supposed to finally start two years ago, and the plan was to do there what we've done at Fremont High School.

You know, I've been enjoying my last few Saturdays going to Fremont High School where all day long both outside on the new field and inside in the new gym is girls middle school sports. It's a beautiful thing down at Fremont High every Saturday with girls middle school sports. But none of that work has been done for McClyman's even though the money was been approved. And see what it takes sometimes actually get stuff done in OUSD is the elected official responsible for areas to get involved and make sure things happen. Mister Thomas will tell you the number of times I've reached out to him directly to make sure stuff has happened for the constituents that I serve.

And again, it's it's not even that we hear excuses. People think they don't even have to address it. People think that it's okay. People think, oh, it started. You know, how many times has Ralph Bunch been lit on fire since that work was started?

And people like to throw around dates and when people have been on the school board. But when the district three school board director came onto the board, bunch house students and was providing services. Now it doesn't. And so it's a really sad state that we're in here. These are public facility dollars are actually our most expensive dollars.

We have billions of dollars in repairs that we need to do and no way to fund it. And there was almost a generation of work put into getting McClyman's even on that list in the first place. Then, when it was passed over two different times on two different facility bonds.

Okay. Alright. Okay.

Taking action to move it up the list. Where it was one of three schools slated to get a full rebuild under measure why. And it's interesting that we call it measure y because the question is now, why has still nothing been done there to address the situation? And if the people elected to represent schools don't take it seriously, it's very hard for the advocacy to happen to overturn historical patterns that led to it being like that in the first place. And the lack of care and the way black folks are being treated in the district now should be treated up here.

It's not what we've really experienced before. It used to be what made Oakland just a little bit different than other places in the country. And, again, it's a really sad way to end Black History Month in 2026. Thank you.

Thank you, director Brohard. To add? The only thing I will add is, that the McClymans project as, was submitted to DSA, which is the division of state architects, and as the facilities chair, I was making sure that that the submission was correct and making sure that staff had all the things that they needed to in order to make that submission. Unfortunately, the Division of State Architects took many, many more months longer than we originally thought. But as of this week, it has come out of DSA and has been moving forward.

So we will be continuing to be looking at that project to see what the continuation is happening. So we're gonna go ahead and move on to It's ridiculous.

Take a vote. Unacceptable.

Oh, that's correct. We need to take a vote. Thank you. Can we go ahead and take a vote

on this item, mister Richter? Yes.

Student student directors are absent.

And is that football team gonna be ready in the beginning of the school year?

Director Lotta?

Yes.

Director Williams?

Seal all the toxins removed from the soil. No. Don't be insulting talking about always getting ready to get storm.

Director Williams? Yes. Director Hutchinson?

Abstain.

Director Barry? Yes. You say yes?

Yes.

Thank you. Director Thomason? Yes. Vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

And president Brohard? Yes. Motion's adopted.

Thank you. Now we're on to you, which is the president's report. Director Brohard, do you have a report?

Okay. So

no report there. There is no public comment on this agenda item. So we'll move on to board reports. I'll start with director Hutchinson.

Thank you. I'm not surprised there's not a report from the board president. You know, tonight, when, again, we didn't pass a fiscal solvency plan, it represents an extreme failure from both the board president, the board vice president, and the superintendent. That was the job to provide leadership and to make those things happen. And we didn't even have a halfway baked plan come forward or a plan that didn't make sense.

There was literally no plan and no vote. And y'all have known about this since the fall. Since the fall. And because you took no action on top of that, you just voted to lay off 400 staff members with no justification. Didn't even ask anyone to say, why are we laying off this person instead of another?

Didn't even ask what kind of savings are we gonna achieve from that? And then went on to talk the rest of the night about the things you think are important. And, actually, you had just made cuts in all of those things that you claim you think are important. I know I'm not the only one who received hundreds and hundreds of emails from both union employees in the district and parents at cities across or at schools across the district saying don't do these cuts. It doesn't make sense.

It'll leave our school in a position where we can't function. And it didn't matter to anyone up here. It didn't matter. They actually spent more time yelling about what they think I did four years ago than even addressing the current crisis. We knew what we were supposed to do back in October.

It was to approve a implementation plan for a fiscal solvency that included a timeline directing staff when to present first the plan for this year's cuts and for next year's. I'm still the only one who ever introduced a resolution to actually satisfy that. And here we are with with nothing. And people up here think they're gonna engineer away now with through a backroom deal to avert a strike somehow by negotiating money we don't have. And so if there's a strike, we all need to understand that strike is against the school board.

So our school board members wanna go and join the picket line for the strike that they caused because of their mismanagement? Are they gonna go explain to our employees why you cut their positions? Are you gonna go explain to all the schools why they won't have the staffing that they need based on nothing? I really haven't seen anything like it. And once this last shoe drops, I agree with what I heard spoken recently.

It's time for somebody out there to reach out to the grand jury because if people aren't stopped, there is going to be no end to this madness, and we're responsible for a billion public dollars a year. It's clearly been mismanaged, and, unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like many people up on the dais even care. But them chickens will always come home to roost.

Reminding folks that we are in board reports. So, director Thompson.

Yeah. I'll make this very, very quick. I'm just excited that mister Preston Thomas deserves a shout out because we were experiencing a very serious situation at Highland CDC, and it was taken care of immediately. So I'm really excited about that. Thank you, OUSD.

Doctor Lata? Director Williams?

Thank you.

There you go.

Thank you, director Bachelor. Just wanna share that Prescott's having a black history assembly tomorrow. Really excited to attend, see the young folks. You know, really proud of the school. It's been growing.

It's really taken in the it's been open and many residents who are moving in are moving their children into the school. It is growing and really has a fantastic culture. So I just really wanna lift up Prescott. Generally, every Wednesday, we have parents out front greeting our students. I mean, it's just a very family oriented place.

You know, if you don't have anything to do, come by at 08:30 on a Wednesday, and we have some coffee and donuts for you. And

you

can talk to the parents. You can talk to the PFT crew, which has just been some amazing parents who's doing work there. So I'm really excited to celebrate black history. Also, you know, just the urban garden, miss Wanda Stewart, is doing a fantastic job really incorporating our our gardening program into our academics. She's brought in lots of funding as well.

So thank you, Wanda. You've really been doing your thing, but not only to Prescott, to Martin Luther King, to Wams, to Hoover, and throughout the district. So we really have a lot of good things going by. If you wanna come by, check it out, hit me up. I love to show you all the great things.

Miss Umah, you're doing a fantabulous job at West Oakland Middle School.

You're good.

Oh, okay. I was gonna get to that. Stream of consciousness. Great job there. We got a nice renovation going there, renovation at Martin Luther King, so proud of that.

Hoover got a great renovation there. I mean, all the schools in District 3 are really finally coming together and each one of them very, very strong some strong administrators who have experience. And so every school is a dynamic school and a great school to choose. Parents, please take a look at it. Walk by.

You won't regret it. It is fabulous. We're doing some great work. Thank you very much, and see you at the Black Assembly tomorrow, 9AM to 10:15. Bye bye.

Director Barry. Yeah. I'll be quick. Just wanna shout out some bright moments in such a heavy day. First, thank you to those who showed up for office hours.

Lots of great conversation. The next one is on the March 21. That's a Saturday. I wanna give a shout out to the Black Student Union at United for Success Academy for the Black History Month celebration that they had yesterday, I think it was, it was awesome. And I couldn't stay long, but even the little bit that I stayed was just like a very good anchoring reminder of everything that's at stake in some of the decisions we're making right now.

The same for the visit that I made on Saturday to Manzanita Seed and Manzanita community for the opening of their garden. It's beautiful. You have to go check it out. It is absolutely beautiful. And to see, you know, the kids picking their kale, making smoothies.

I didn't eat I think the first time I ate kale, I was like in my thirties, really. So it's just really cool. Shout out to all of the district five schools right now for holding it down for our kids.

Thank you. Yeah. I wanna you you reminded me of the beautiful garden at Burke Halter now, and I wanted to also uplift the amazing park space now that's there, turf space, and just a wonderful I see students there all the time now really enjoying that space. And not only the space, the garden, but also now just the absolutely amazing murals that are up. So if you're ever by Edwards Avenue, come on by, check it out.

Burkhalter has got a new look to it, and it's amazing. I also want to give a shout out to Preston Thomas and our facilities team for not only presenting at the CASH conference, which is the coalition of adequate school housing conference, but also taking students with them to present around some of the climate justice work that we've been doing. Some of our students from Melrose Leadership Academy are presenting at this conference to talk about heat pumps and the heat pump technology that we have installed in or will be installing in many of our school sites. So, it's a wonderful experience for them and their continued development as young people. And I wanna just give a early or I guess, save the date, for the next forty by forty Neighborhood Empowerment Day at Roots, Parker Community Health Resource Center brought to you by Roots.

And it's gonna be, March 14, twelve to four. It's wonderful. They open up the whole playground. Kids are playing. There's like different community organizations tabling.

There's free food. It's a wonderful day. So please come on by to the Parker Community Resource Center, formerly known as Parker Elementary, and enjoy the day with us and roots. That is the last board report. Go ahead.

I

did neglect to talk about, Superintendent Sadler and I have been going to many schools, and we have been meeting with parents at Cleveland, Crocker, Glenview. We have a couple coming up at Roosevelt and at Garfield. Also met with parents and family members at Bella Vista, which was nice. I taught with the principal there, so that was nice to see her again. But again, it's been really good conversations.

A lot of questions about, you know, what we're doing here, where the budget's going, what people can expect. But I think listening, I think somebody mentioned before about reaching out, you know, to hearing what the communities wanted to say, and that the community felt that they could, you know, have a say in this. And I think conversations were really good. A number of them were held at the principal's coffee that they do once a week. So anyway, we've been out doing that and talking with, I think, seven different schools so far.

We're making the tour. Thank you.

And thank you, superintendent, for reminding me, but we also I was honored enough to do a training with the California Department of Education with one of our teachers from Bridges Academy around how to support our immigrant students. This was a training with superintendents, administrators, and others throughout California as we're all navigating what the challenges are around supporting immigrant families during this time. And from that I got a lot of emails saying thank you, this was really helpful information. And communities all over California are gonna be taking advantage of some of the ways in which we're supporting our students. So it was really wonderful to be able to to share that work and to continue to advocate for, what we're doing that's new and unique, here in OUSD.

So, yeah, director Berry, go ahead.

Just wanted to give one more shout out because I will be so remiss if I did not. On Friday, I went to a beautiful event at Laney College. It was a youth panel on homelessness facilitated, cohosted by the CTE TAHUB leaders and the Alameda County's Youth Advisory Board. The conversation was facilitated by a state senator. They just showed up with so much wisdom to hear them engage, not just with the challenges that they've experienced firsthand, but the possibility, how much more we could do and to engage directly with policy on that.

I think it was really powerful to be a part of that on Friday. Shout out to you all for putting that together.

Okay. With no other pop up comments, we are going to move into w, which is introduction of new legislative items. Does anyone have any new legislative items items they would like to introduce? All right, with no hands popping up, we'll go ahead and move to X, which is adjournment. Thank you, everybody for joining us.

Point of clarification. It was said before that the board was going back into closed session. Is that still happening? Where's the declaration of what's going to be discussed? And that means the board has to come out and report when they're done, and that all needs to be done by 11:45.

So you can't just adjourn. So are you going into closed session or not? So you weren't telling the truth before when you said that. Okay.

And we had a change of plans.