Oakland School Board Spurns Campus Closures, Plans to Merge Some Schools Instead

Facing a major budget crisis, the Oakland Unified School District plans to merge 10 co-located public schools next August rather than close any campuses, district leaders said Friday.

While OUSD’s staff initially created a larger list of schools to consolidate in addition to the co-located campuses, a majority of the school board did not support the plan, according to outgoing president Sam Davis.

The mergers are one part of the district’s plan to reduce costs to close a $174 million budget deficit. OUSD is on the brink of regaining total local control after a state takeover in 2003, but fiscal uncertainty threatens to thwart that.

The schools the district plans to merge are:

• International Community School and Think College Now Elementary School
• Manzanita Community School and Manzanita SEED Elementary School
• United for Success Academy and Life Academy
• Acorn Woodland Elementary and EnCompass Academy
• Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy and Esperanza Elementary School

Superintendent Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell said in an email to families that the mergers would create schools that better serve students.

“These changes will allow us to combine resources and staff to create stronger educational programs where our students are now,” the message reads.

Davis, a first-term board member who did not run for reelection, said he’s worried that without more closures now, the district could end up under the control of Alameda County — and those closures could come anyway.

“It’s very clear what we need to do to become more sustainable,” he told KQED. “And it’s not clear right now what our board’s plan is to get there.”

These mergers are part of the district’s fiscal stabilization plan. A list of additional campus consolidations, which didn’t have enough board support in smaller meetings held in recent weeks, was dropped and will not be proposed, Davis said.

Other aspects include considering centralizing contracts with some service manufacturers, like those that provide copiers, at school sites, which are currently done on a school-by-school basis.

How individual schools contract with community agencies could also be centralized, which Davis said has received pushback.

“That’s the one which is more controversial because don’t you want schools to have autonomy to decide which community agencies to contract with rather than it all be centralized?” Davis said. “But, you know, there’s trade-offs either way, and so I think in terms of efficiency, that’s what this is.”

Schools’ discretionary funding from the district could also be impacted.

What will happen once a new board takes office in January, though, is unknown. In January 2023, then-president Mike Hutchinson, who is still on the board, reversed a controversial plan to close 11 schools. The district ended up only closing two, merging one and eliminating middle-school grades at another.

Davis and Board Director Clifford Thompson were the only members who voted against the reversal. Thompson, who was up for reelection this year, is looking likely to hang on to his seat in initial ballot returns.

Three new board members will begin terms in January, though. Davis said he feels confident that the new board members seem invested in the city and district, but he knows that Rachel Latta, who will fill his seat, is skeptical.

Davis worries the plan Johnson-Trammell will propose to the board on Wednesday won’t do enough.

He said that in a letter to the board on Thursday, Alameda County Superintendent Alysse Castro warned that while the district’s current budget was approved, the district was headed for a “fiscal cliff.”

“When we look forward, it is almost inevitable that the District will face a ‘lack of going concern’ or ‘negative certification’ without major and prompt action,” the letter reads. “These designations would lead to [the Alameda County Office of Education] reluctantly implementing additional fiscal interventions.”

KQED’s Sara Hossaini contributed to this report.