If California school district officials need a lesson on how not to deal with declining enrollments, they can look to Oakland.
Amid ongoing community protests, the Oakland Unified School District board voted Tuesday to close seven schools and merge two more over the next two years to reduce the operating deficit. There’s no doubt the district had to do something serious about its finances. It has been through two separate periods of irresponsible spending that landed it in serious deficit. It received a couple of bailouts from the state and is still in state receivership.
Its enrollment, like those in districts statewide, is in steady decline, and it’s operating twice as many schools as other Bay Area districts with similar student populations. As a November warning letter from the Alameda County Office of Education noted, the district was expanding its staff even as its student population was dropping markedly each year.
