Hello, and I hope you had a wonderful, restful summer break. As we wrap up the second week of the 2026-27 school year there are a ton of updates so I wanted to post a recap of where we are right now. It probably goes without saying that there are some very positive developments. It is also true that those developments are awash in uncertainty. I feel like that's all I see everywhere, all the time, in this district!

A common theme that I would like folks to keep in mind: Though there is no question that OUSD remains in a tough position financially, the picture has improved markedly since December. This is largely due to the hard work of district leadership led by our superintendent Dr. Denise Saddler, along with the board's willingness to vote yes on very difficult cuts without having the time to properly judge the impact.

I believe we can only solve our financial challenges if we can stop fighting over the numbers. We must use our limited time and energy to figure out how to eliminate the rest of our deficit, as a community with a common vision and purpose. Read on…

Budget Revisions

I wrote after the 2026-27 budget was adopted in June that OUSD was projecting (before final numbers from state revenue and other expenses were accounted for) a need to cut $30 million from the budget for this upcoming year.¹

The budget revisions did not meaningfully change that number, but the good news is now, as it was then: Our district has reduced the projected deficit to that $30 million from $100 million since December, and maintains local control.²

$30 million is still a lot of money, even when adjusted for inflation. Since cuts this year cannot include reductions in full-time staffing (due to legal notification requirements), it will have to come from other non-labor sources.³ Though I know there are folks who believe and say out loud that there is "no plan" to cut that much, I want to push back on that. Back in June, the district provided a list of solutions with potential targets for these savings and they total over $41 million. This was presented as a fiscal stabilization plan, and I will put the exact line items in that presentation in the footnotes of this post.⁴

What you should know about this, at a high level:

• A large portion of the $30 million will likely need to come from moving some Special Education expenses from unrestricted dollars to restricted dollars. This will in part come from an increase in the dollars that the State allocated to Special Education. The projected target is $14.7 million.⁵
• Another $11.2 million will come from items carried forward from prior plans such as reductions in contracts, elimination of teachers on special assignment, and reducing vacant positions that will not be filled.⁶
• This is all largely savings in the general unrestricted fund, but there are additional proposed reductions to restricted spending (about $13 million).⁷
• All of these things are proposed and estimated. It is not possible for anyone to know exactly how much each of them will save. Staff has done the work to provide these estimates, and the board will need to find enough votes to approve these reductions and changes this year.⁸

I led the first meeting of OUSD's Parent Student Advisory Committee (PSAC) last Wednesday in a joint effort with the Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Group (MSEG). At that meeting, Troy Christmas, a veteran OUSD finance guru and all-around amazing guy, gave us a very good high-level orientation to where the budget stands right now. That presentation is available to watch now and I really recommend it if you're looking for a more detailed (though not too detailed!) understanding of our budget issues.⁹

If you're reading through the proposed cuts for this year and getting a sinking feeling, join the club. The district is already coping with drastic staffing reductions from last year and, to eliminate the deficit entirely, the board will have to grit its teeth and accept even more austerity this year. The impact of these cuts is uncertain, but they are necessary nonetheless. The only other option is to "kick the can down the road" by accepting insolvency and intervention. That will not solve the problem. Instead, it will simply leave it up to others to make the same drastic cuts for us.

Blink and You Might Miss the Good News

In the year or so that I've been volunteering in our district context, an enterprise that can be very frustrating on several levels, I've probably been most frustrated that few people seem to see that, for the first time in a long time, there's actual progress being made around here. I've never been a "blame the media" kind of person, but I have to say it is depressing how little ink is expended by local reporters on any of the positive developments going on. Nevertheless, even the haters have to accept the fact that the district is not actually about to go bankrupt, that they haven't been falsifying numbers, and that district leadership and the Board (not to mention our army of volunteers) are doing work every day to try and figure this out collectively.

Ashley McBride, whom you may know I am fond of despite some differences, seems to be picking up this glimmer of optimism. I am grateful for this. She even used the words "good news" in the headline of her article covering the latest board meeting, an occurrence so rare that it feels worthy of a spit-take.¹⁰ There are a number of things to highlight, even outside of what was reported, so here we go:

1. The state budget revisions amounted to $20 million in new revenue for OUSD above what was approved in June. That is basically in line with estimates from last year, and it has now been booked into projections.¹¹
2. $12 million of that $20 million will come from increases in special education funding by the state, stemming from a much-hailed 43% increase statewide.¹²
3. The other $8 million is the balance from the increase to the Cost of Living Adjustment from last year, called the "Super COLA" (4.31% COLA versus 2.87%).¹³
4. Superintendent Saddler reported that OUSD opens the year with over 99% of its teaching positions filled, the lowest vacancy rate in years. This could in part be the result of the new higher salaries OUSD is offering to teachers, though likely only one factor.¹⁴
5. Additionally, many vital roles that were contracted out, including paraeducators, speech pathologists, psychologists and other positions, were filled by direct hiring. This is a very positive development on an issue that basically everyone supports; reducing the district's reliance on expensive contracts and consultants to fill key services. It also increases the continuity, sustainability, and integration of those services within our schools and district.¹⁵

It's here that I want to remind folks that all of the above happened on the watch of the current board, and the current district leadership. Many loud detractors and even some supposedly independent-minded journalists claimed that the district would become insolvent and collapse under the weight of fraud and incompetence. What I see instead is several months of steady progress by a team of folks working on an intractable and long-standing problem.

A Saturday Morning with the Superintendent

On August 15th, OUSD's advisory committees (I am on the Parent Student Advisory Committee, or PSAC) met for more than five hours to discuss our goals for 2026-27. We have a very important year in front of us, as district leadership looks for ways to further stabilize our district's finances. It is also the year when we must write a new three-year Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP). Specifically, the PSAC has an oversight role over the goals and actions outlined in our LCAP, and without going through all the arcana here I'll just say that each year our committee presents district leadership with a set of questions and/or recommendations based upon our concerns about what is written in the LCAP. These questions and recommendations are publicly presented, and a response by the Superintendent to what we have submitted is statutorily required.¹⁶

As you can imagine, the last couple of years have seen a number of very important questions and recommendations posed by PSAC. In June, Superintendent Saddler notified us that she would be furnishing a detailed response to us in person, and she made good on that commitment during over two hours of our Saturday morning retreat. This type of direct, two-way dialogue with the Superintendent about our recommendations is unprecedented.

In addition to the clear, detailed, and thoughtful written response we received, Dr. Saddler presented us, in person, with a number of specific measures she is directing her senior leadership team to support. She then took questions from all the attending members of the advisory committees.

For several months, I have listened to a very loud set of voices leveling some pretty serious criticisms and accusations at the superintendent. On the reasonable end of this spectrum are concerns about transparency and communication that I share. Unfortunately, I find the reasonable stuff getting drowned out by folks calling her a liar, a criminal, incompetent, and worse. These personal, unfounded attacks are destructive to our community's ability to work together in good faith, and I personally believe they are irresponsible and unproductive given the time and resource constraints we face together. Putting aside for the moment any political motivation behind these accusations and allowing for the fact that maybe these detractors know something I don't, I ask that you pause to consider my counter-narrative from the time she spent with us over the weekend.

What was offered to our gathering of advisory committee members was both an accurate reflection of many of our most important concerns, and also a frank in-person exchange about the urgency of those concerns and where the district continues to fall short. Superintendent Saddler was engaged, honest, and forthcoming. She furnished responses to each of us that were grounded in the current realities of the district. Not only did she sit and maintain a calm and optimistic demeanor for hours, she also demonstrated a true understanding of the work at hand, both for her team and the community at large.

If you believe that maybe I'm shining things up by saying this, I'll follow by saying every single committee member that I spoke to after the superintendent left agreed with my assessment. This group includes folks with long, frustrating experiences at OUSD who have every reason to doubt Dr. Saddler's ability to deliver; even these folks expressed hope and an expectation of change. That says a lot about what we heard. Here's a direct quote from her letter to our advisory committees, and I think it sums things up well:

"The relationship between OUSD and its families must be based on more than consultation. It must be based on partnership, transparency, accountability, and trust. Trust does not require that we always agree. There will be difficult decisions ahead, and there will be times when fiscal realities prevent us from doing everything our community and I as Superintendent would like us to do.

But disagreement should never prevent transparency. Fiscal challenges should never become an excuse for inadequate engagement. And community participation should never feel ceremonial."

The Real Good News

I'm pretty lucky in that I get to talk often with OUSD lifers. Most of them have worked within our systems of self-governance for many years and continue to provide guidance based upon experience and a love for our students, not politics. There's a lot of stuff we don't exactly agree on, but a huge number of them (and me as well) see what is happening right now as a true opportunity to finally overcome both our financial and performance challenges as a district. Collectively we believe, despite a strongly negative narrative being pushed by political forces and individuals, that the right people are in the room. And those people are working together effectively right now to make the opportunity real.

This is a message I will be bringing to the school board directly and publicly. It is a myth that there is disarray on the board; that all our problems have happened on their watch and the watch of Superintendent Saddler; that there is inaction, no plan, and no hope while these folks are in charge. Let's look at some of the general critiques, all of which I believe are understandable, from Alameda County Superintendent Castro, reporters and bloggers, labor unions, political organizations, parents, etc. Let's go over them one by one to see what is actually happening:

OUSD has a pattern of making plans to fix its issues and then not following through on difficult decisions.¹⁷

And yet… the board made the decision to approve incredibly unpopular cuts and layoffs last year, contributing to a reduction of the structural deficit by ~$70 million over six months.¹⁸

District budgeting does not follow best practices to the detriment of students.

And yet… one of the biggest moves towards fiscal stabilization since December has been adopting some of those best practices, including using restricted dollars first, reviewing service contracts one-by-one to maximize the use of dollars on non-labor expenses, and strengthening our requisition and purchasing procedures.¹⁹

Those who work directly with students are underpaid and the district cannot retain talent and stable staffing.

And yet… over 99% of teaching positions were filled by the start of the 2026-27 school year, after a teachers strike was averted and after pay was raised to make OUSD a more competitive employer.²⁰ Of special note is the fact that, for the first time in at least a decade, there are no vacant Special Education classroom teacher positions at the start of the school year, no related service vacancies, and only a handful of support staff vacancies. This is a remarkable achievement in the area of education that is hardest to staff.²¹

The district relies far too much on contractors and consultants, especially in the area of special education.

And yet… the district hired a significant number of Special Education positions full-time this year, reducing its reliance on outside contractors to fill hard-to-staff roles such as psychologists and speech therapists.¹⁵

We're in a huge deficit and nobody has presented a plan to address it.

And yet… the district presented the board with specific solutions totaling $41.5 million in potential unrestricted savings back in June. (The board needs to approve at least $30 million of it this year.)⁴

Financial mismanagement has OUSD on the verge of insolvency.

And yet… the district remains solvent despite the doomsday projections, has kept local control and is not currently planning on taking out another loan.²²

While none of the above actions invalidate years of mismanagement and dysfunction, and while there's plenty of time for it to all go sideways, my point is simply this:

Dr. Saddler and almost the entire current school board have been working to address this history since December, and they've been doing it together. This is the real good news, unless you're hoping for them to fail.