The Oakland Unified School District is looking better for the 2024-25 fiscal year than it did last fall, but its use of one-time strategies isn’t solving the problem of too much money going out, and not enough coming in.
The second largest school district in the Bay Area adopted a budget that reduced the projected $95 million deficit to about $30 million, according to a press release Friday citing a report on Wednesday’s Board of Education action.
Due to deficit spending of about $60 million this year, OUSD’s unrestricted reserves are going down from $118 million to just over $57 million to start 2025-26.
That deficit will cut the starting reserves to just over $26 million or 2.9%. The board requires the district to keep a 3% reserve, which is 1% higher than the state requirement, but the new budget doesn’t meet that requirement.
The budget also omits several items that were not included due to time and other constraints, so a formal budget revision will be made in August, according to the district.
These revisions may worsen the outlook, it said, as some will include state budget changes and reductions in revenue due to lower attendance.