“If you don’t want this repeat cycle, we would have conferred and I would have been able to see this [amendment] prior to 30 minutes before the meeting,” budget chief Lisa Grant-Dawson said. “Please know that if you adopt this [amended] resolution, it still will have problems.”
Ultimately, the board majority chose to repeal the resolution entirely, but the meeting further deepened the chasm between board members and with staff — and could threaten their collective goal to serve Oakland students.
Grant-Dawson told KQED after the meeting that even with the budget adjustments repealed, staff won’t have time to reinstate the funding to schools until after the budget process is completed at the end of June.
“We’re too far into budget development to take off the [caps] and then rebalance and still be ready for the [Local Control and Accountability Plan] and budget,” she said. “We’re literally weeks away from our public hearing as well as the adoption.
“This has created a whole different degree of consternation of us having to adjust all these budgets. It took me almost a month to figure out what was the most equitable way to do it, because we’re not talking about five lines of data, we are talking about thousands of lines of data to change,” Grant-Dawson continued.
She said the plan is to lift the spending limits once the budget process wraps up at the end of June.
According to Brekke-Miesner, stalling that technical change won’t financially impact his program, but it does extend his and other aftercare program providers’ uncertainty.
“It creates a lot of confusion, and a delay like this basically means that agencies are going into summer not knowing if everything is going to be remediated and restored,” Brekke-Miesner said. “That means that they could then have to lay off staff in July or August, or tell families in July or August that, ‘Actually, your kid doesn’t have aftercare next year,’ when the ship has sailed on any other alternatives.”
It is expected that when Johnson-Trammell departs the district at the end of June, other executive staff, including Grant-Dawson, could leave with her. Grant-Dawson was previously set to depart OUSD in alignment with Johnson-Trammell’s transition out in 2026.
An application was also opened for an interim superintendent earlier this month, but no one has been named to take over in July.
Brekke-Miesner said that while questions of who will be district leadership are a concern, ultimately, his main worry is with the school board’s inability to get along.
“The level of discourse and derision and disrespect is just so constant and high level that I think it thwarts the ability to really effectively try to solve some really complicated problems,” he told KQED. “I think collectively, the board has to kind of have a ‘Come to Jesus moment’ because it’s going to require a lot more cooperation and respect.”
