THE OAKLAND UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT this week voted to reverse course on a decision to potentially gut afterschool and summer programs that roiled the school community for the past month.
The board’s decision repeals a vote from March 26 that would have capped the district’s spending on outside contractors at $125 million.
The cap was an apparent effort to help reduce a projected $95 million budget deficit to, as it currently stands, about $12.5 million.
But in what many said was the unintended consequence of rushing through a proposal without adequate public input, the move would have also cut spending on afterschool and other programs, largely provided by outside organizations, by as much as 80 percent if the board hadn’t rescinded the decision Wednesday night.
“They unintentionally impacted afterschool and critical student support services to young people in the district,” said one such service provider, Tony Douangviseth, executive director of Youth Together, which operates a youth center at Skyline High School serving more than 60 percent of the student body, among other things.
Douangviseth said Thursday he and many others only learned of the spending cap in the second week of May, after which parents, students, community members and after school and summer service providers began a campaign to convince the board to rescind its decision.
“I want to make sure we highlight that this was a community effort to get our school board to listen to our concerns,” he said. “People voted you in to center young people and also make sure you provide those safety nets to students. It took a community effort to get them to listen.”
Before the vote Wednesday night, dozens of OUSD students, parents and afterschool program providers urged the board to repeal the spending cuts.
“I want to make sure we highlight that this was a community effort to get our school board to listen to our concerns.”
Tony Douangviseth, executive director of Youth Together
Several said the programs provide safe spaces for children who might otherwise have no place to go after school or who would be stuck at home alone until their parents got off work.
Other speakers said the programs support working parents and provide expanded educational and recreational opportunities for participants, who also have access to support systems, trained staff and adult mentors.
“I was a latchkey kid growing up in OUSD,” said Josefina Alvarado-Mena, CEO of Safe Passages, an afterschool program provider. “My mom had to leave her kids at home alone because there were no afterschool programs.”
While the district has come a long way in its ability to support students outside of school hours, Alvarado-Mena said, that’s due in large part to partnerships with organizations like hers.
Those partners leverage millions of dollars every year from city, state, federal and philanthropic sources that OUSD can’t access directly, she said.
As an example, Alvarado-Mena said a single source, the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, helps deliver nearly $6 million in services every year to OUSD elementary, middle and high school students.
“Help us help you ensure that every single child in OUSD has access to quality after school programs when they need it,” she said.
‘Thank you for holding us accountable’
Board president Jennifer Brouhard, co-author of the original spending cap proposal, and director VanCedric Williams said the spending cap wasn’t intended to gut afterschool programs.
“Now that I’m getting a lot of the reverberation and the push-back, I just want to be clear, there wasn’t any intention to cut any afterschool program,” Williams said. “I just want to say to the community, thank you for holding us accountable, thank you for expressing the impacts that you would have experienced.”
Back in March, however, the board voted 4-3 to pass the spending cap even after staff members informed them that it would, in fact, impact afterschool and other programs, said director Mike Hutchinson, who co-authored the proposal to reverse course.
“It should be clear to everyone that this board is incapable of doing its job and taking care of our community,” Hutchinson said. “And so, as a democratically elected school board, if people fail, if the community loses confidence, then the only right thing to do is resign and take responsibility.”
“And if people won’t do that willingly, then I encourage the community to join me in making that happen,” he said.
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