OUSD afterschool programs could be cut by up to 80%
OUSD afterschool programs could be cut by up to 80%
All the afterschool, early morning and summer programs in the Oakland Unified School District could be cut by up to 80% starting in August.
OAKLAND, Calif. - All the afterschool, early morning and summer programs in the Oakland Unified School District could be cut by up to 80% starting in August.
Afterschool programs to be cut
"So, for families, it means they will not be able to send their children to afterschool programs at the end of the day," said Josefina Alvarado Mena, CEO of Safe Passages, one of the many groups that provides after-school care for children in the district.
She said the cuts also mean that there will be limited availability for summer programming, weekend programming and early morning care.
The other programs include the East Bay Asian Youth Center, Oakland Leaf, Girls Inc., Bay Area Community Resources, East Bay Agency for Children, Youth Together and Oakland Kids First – and all will be affected.
What this means is that families will have to leave work to pick up their kids, pay for a sitter to get them or find some way to transport their children to another type of program that can watch them until the end of the work day.
Although the exact number of children this would affect was not immediately available, Safe Passages cares for hundreds of children each day, ranging between 125 and 325 students at various individual school sites. There are roughly 35,000 students in the Oakland Unified School District.
Alvarado Meno said if the board action takes place, Safe Passages' grants of between $300,000 and $400,000 would be reduced to about $80,000.
"In addition to keeping kids safe in Oakland and giving kids the opportunity to do all kinds of sports and arts and wonderful activities," she said, "those opportunities will be gone."
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Lower-income families would be hit hardest
She pointed out that slashing the afterschool programs – forcing families to have to leave their jobs or hire expensive sitters to pick up the kids – would be especially hard for lower-income families.
"They'll be impacted the most," she said. "Because they have the least amount of resources to find alternative options."
These programs are imperative to allow parents to go to work, Alvarado Mena emphasized.
Board voted in March
The item was buried in the March 26 agenda item "directing alternative budget adjustments," sponsored by board members Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor.
The specific item states that the district must "cap the total expenditures on services and contracts at $125 million" through the 2026-2027 school year.
Alvarado Meno explained that within this item, there was a cap on all contracts, which "inadvertently" included all the afterschool programs at OUSD, even though that money is mostly state grants that can't be used for anything else.
"It just seems like we should not have been scooped up in this bucket," she said.
The issue was "not thoroughly discussed" before the vote was taken, Alvarado Mena said, "nor does it seem like the board members had enough information to make this specific decision, and I don't think they understood all of the implications of this specific action… the board did not even have a written report."
At the meeting, a visibly frustrated board member, Mike Hutchinson, said this was the third consecutive board meeting with no written amendment for the board to discuss and vote on.
"That's not how we're supposed to do this," Hutchinson said with a sigh. "I don't understand why there wasn't a written copy. No one in the community has a copy….I've never seen anything like this."
At the meeting, Bachelor said the item was meant to cap services and introduce budget savings totaling $95 million.
KTVU contacted every OUSD board member as well as OUSD spokesman John Sasaki early Tuesday morning and did not hear back from anyone to explain how it is that the afterschool programs got caught up in the outside contract vote.
Trying to reverse vote
Alvarado Mena said she has been rallying the troops, trying to show the board members the repercussions of what they did, and she hopes that the issue will be rectified at a future date.
Many of the afterschool groups plan to rally before the school board meeting on Wednesday to raise awareness, but there is no scheduled date for a re-vote.
"We went there to be accountability for Oakland's children and families," she said.