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Monday, April 26, 2010

Oakland school district: New downsizing details | The Education Report

Oakland school district: New downsizing details | The Education Report

Oakland school district: New downsizing details

By Katy Murphy
Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 1:35 pm in OUSD central office, budget.
The payroll of Oakland Unified, one of the city’s largest employers, is about to shrink. The school system would have about 460 fewer full-time positions — about 9 percent of the current workforce — come July 1, under the CFO’s latest proposal to address the district’s massive projected deficit. It will be discussed at Wednesday night’s 5 p.m. school board meeting.
Jobs of just about every shape and size would thin out under the plan: teachers, assistant principals, security officers, high-level district “executive staff,” gardeners, painters, clerks, support coaches for new teachers, adult education and child development teachers — you name it. The central office would eliminate 105 positions, about 17 percent of its staff. And 114 K-12 teaching positions would be reduced, about 6 percent.
Hopefully the new security camera system works as promised (and rolls out quickly), as middle schools, with one exception, would have just one school security officer on staff, and elementary schools won’t have any. High schools would each have five. (Page 13)
Cuts to the facilities staff would mean a response time of up to three days for emergency calls, instead of 24 hours, and up to two weeks to fix, if not longer, for non-emergencies. (Pages 20-21)
Some of the NExOs (Network Executive Officers) — apparently to be renamed