Parents remain outraged as OUSD declines to take action on possible school closures

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Leaders in the Oakland Unified School District are putting off a vote on school closures as it deals with a massive projected budget deficit for next year.

Parents, students, and community members voiced their outrage Wednesday night over the idea of consolidating ten schools into five.

"Don't touch our schools, we need more not less!" one speaker said.

One by one speakers took to the microphone at this Oakland Unified School Board meeting Wednesday night to voice their opinions about the district possibly closing schools. The closures would be an effort to cut what is projected to be a $75-95 million budget deficit next year.

RELATED: Oakland teachers union opposes school mergers, says district budget not as dire as projected

"Don't close schools, you already closed my sister's school," said one boy.

"No to the mergers!" said another person.

After dozens of speakers, the board didn't take any action on closing or merging schools.

"There's been no motion, there's no vote, so this will not happen. It will not move forward," said OUSD board president Benjamin Davis. "We thank everyone for coming out tonight, there's nothing happening on the mergers tonight."

While no action means no closures for now, Carrie Hahnel of a national education non-profit Bellwether says this budget problem is not going away.

"It might be able to get away with a year or two of trimming around the edges but that's not likely to be helpful for improving academic achievement which is the districts priority," said Hahnel.

RELATED: Oakland Unified facing projected $95 million deficit in 2025

Oakland had a little more than 34,000 students enrolled in 2023, which is 16,000 or so less than 2003.

"The primary reason for declining enrollment is because the birth rate is declining across the state there are fewer young people in our cities and therefore fewer young people in our schools," said Hahnel. "It's hard to imagine what it could do to reduce the size of deficit it has without dramatically reducing staff."

Parents in Oakland say they've lost trust in this process.

"I'm tired of you lying to us saying that you're going to vote no tonight but you're still going to merge these schools!" yelled a parent.

The board also looked at 30 or so measures that could be cut to save money.

"At the end of the day the school board has to be able to make difficult decisions if it's in the best interest of the future students of the school district," said Hahnel.

A previous plan to close and merge schools back in 2022 led to several members of the school board being recalled by the community. So it appears, at least for now, the community has won on this issue again.