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August 12 Board Meeting Recap

By Anna Utgoff —
August 12 Board Meeting Recap

Lee esta publicación en español

Welcome to the first board meeting recap of the 2026-27 school year! We had a great summer full of camping, swimming, and nail-biter World Cup matches, and we hope yours was just as good! Now we’re back and ready to dive into board business.  

📉💰📊Budget Update

Context: At the beginning of school year 2025-26, OUSD was spending $100M more than it receives in revenue annually, and leadership at the time expected to run out of money this year or next year. The school board has been working with district leadership on a “Fiscal Stabilization Plan” to reduce expenses and avoid having to take out a loan, which would trigger a county takeover. At the end of last year, the board passed a budget that projected OUSD would stay solvent in 26-27, but in order to do so the board committed to finding $30M in savings during the school year. (For more detail, see our budget timeline).

At this meeting: Senior Director Troy Christmas reported on the “45-day budget revision”, an updated picture of the district’s finances after the state budget is finalized. The update included some good news: funding from the state is $8M higher than forecast in the budget.  Christmas emphasized that further cuts are still needed. "You're not running out of funding, you're not insolvent, you're not going bankrupt... but you have deficit spending you need to handle."  

Christmas also shared that shortly before the presentation, errors were found in the district’s calculation of expenditures. “I hate errors, it is not comfortable to come before you and say there are errors in documents… and we have already talked internally about what we need to do to make sure that does not happen again.”

Director Comment:

Hutchinson was frustrated that the board had to vote on inaccurate numbers. He asked Superintendent Saddler why her team wasn’t sharing a plan for the $30M in savings the district must find this year.

Director Thompson, who abstained from the vote, said, "I want to go on record saying I was not at the board meeting the last part of June, so I don't want to be held responsible for a budget I didn't vote for." 

Brouhard asked Christmas to explain “something I'm asked a lot... Can you explain the $30M deficit, and how do we see dealing with that over time?” (Christmas’s explanation: “This budget …assumes that we'll implement $30M in reductions. If you don't do that, you'll end the year with only $23M in reserves. That's below our 3% requirement.”)

Director Berry asked that Wednesday’s numbers be promptly corrected and shared. She also asked to see more detail on the plan for the $30M in cuts.

Williams emphasized the hard work the board has done to improve the district’s finances, and Bachelor celebrated that the board has kept district finances healthy enough to avoid takeover by the county.

Latta prompted Christmas to explain why the district wasn’t using the $8M in new revenue to reduce the amount that must be cut this year. "Everybody had been hearing 'Oh, the state budget is so great,'  and yet we're not changing directions, and staff is not recommending that.”  Christmas’s explanation alluded to “expenses on the horizon” that aren’t yet in the budget. Latta cited a potential raise for UAOS (the principals’ union) as an example of the kind of expenses that may be added to the budget.

Public Comment:

📺Frequent commenter Assata Olugbala: “You have adopted a budget that reflects a future cut. You can do that, but (state law) recommends that you do the cuts as soon as possible.  The question is, could you have done it before school started?  Because it looks like we’ve started school, and we might have to cut services, staff, or resources.”

📺Parent and D6 school board candidate LeAna Powell: “My school is in a crisis…. I spent 4 hours at my children' s school today supporting their teachers, because they are short-staffed.  How is this going to land on our children?”

Our take:

Last night’s budget conversation rehashed arguments we’ve heard before: 

  • The budget picture is improving vs. we still have so far to go. 
  • The board deserves credit for making hard cuts vs. we need a plan for the $30M. 

As in past recaps, we think all those things can be true. We can be making real progress and still need to stay disciplined, so the district stays solvent and the hard work already done pays off. 

We did note some shifts in directors’ positions and rhetoric last night. Thompson, who has frequently voted with the majority on budget issues, chose last night to distance himself from this budget. Brouhard (who faces a challenge in the November election from parent Arielle Fleisher) alluded to pressure from her constituents to explain the $30M plug. Latta, who had previously expressed hope that increased state revenue would reduce the need for cuts, expressed support for reducing spending by the full $30M. To our ears, that suggests all three directors are concerned about the remaining budget challenges.

The big open question remains: how exactly will the district implement the $30M in planned reductions required to stay solvent this year? When asked what the plan was for the $30M, Troy Christmas referred the board to the $41M in 26-27 savings targets outlined in the Fiscal Stabilization Plan. That plan’s largest line item by far is $14.7M in reduced contributions to special education. (The revised state budget will increase the special education funding, but we do not know by how much yet.) The last time we heard an update on special education savings was at the June 4 Budget and Finance Committee meeting. At that time Deputy Superintendent Tara Gard reported that the work hadn’t started yet, and added that it was possible the outcome would be that the district just needs to plan for continued increases in special education expenses. In that scenario “we need to cut more,” she explained.

📺Deputy Superintendent Gard’s 6/4 report on the reduced contributions to special education projected in the Fiscal Stabilization Plan

Once again, we find ourselves in agreement with Director Berry’s wish to see a more specific plan explaining what “cut more” might look like. Ideally, that plan will be driven by the board’s vision for what programs will deliver what matters most to the community, and a budget restructured to fully staff those programs. We hope to see such a vision in the coming months.

Also of note

Upcoming events

There are many upcoming advisory committee and Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Group (MSEG) meetings, including 

  • August 19 at 7pm: Informational Session about the OUSD Budget
  • August 20: virtual MSEG meeting
  • August 25: in-person MSEG meeting

In the news

And that’s it for our first 26-27 recap. Thanks for sticking with us, OUSD friends.

Anna, Bekah, and Jess