Board to Discuss Certificated Layoffs and OUSD Facilities at Wednesday's Meeting

March 8, 2011

In Board Watch Blog

Tomorrow's OUSD Board Meeting will include discussion and decisions on some urgent, high-importance items including certificated staff layoff notices and OUSD facilities.

The Student Directors Report includes updates and information on the All City Council and the Youth and Family Conference at McClymonds on March 12th.

The Board is being asked to approve Certificated Layoffs notices for the 2011-12 school year. If state budget circumstances change, layoff notices can be rescinded prior to May 9th, or further layoffs may be conducted in August. California Education Code requires that staff that may be laid off be notified by March 15th. The board is being asked to approve notices to 510 FTE including 231 K-5 teachers. For the past several years, OUSD has been able to avoid layoffs by finding cuts elsewhere and because there were enough staff leaving voluntary. Staff are laid off in "reverse seniority" order. Because OUSD has shortages of teachers with Special Education and bilingual authorization, those teachers are exempt from seniority-based layoffs. In addition, this board resolution would authorize the elimination of all K-12 courses that are not accessible to English learners because the certificated teacher does not possess a valid English Learner authorization.

The Board is being asked to approve a "Public Agency Retirement Services Supplemental Retirement Plan" (SRP) for certain CAL STRS and PERS Members. At their December 9 meeting, the board approved the creation of this early-retirement incentive plan. "The retirement plan provides participating certificated, classified and management employees with a benefit of 75% of their final year annual base salary, paid over a minimum five-year period. During the open enrollment period for the program, 15.25% of the eligible participants submitted a completed application packet to participate in SRP. Assuming conservatively that 100% of program participants (i.e., retirees) are replaced with new hires, we project that the cost to the District to implement SRP over a five year period is approximately $425,000 net of the approximately $10.5 million to fund the benefit to retiring employees."

The Board will vote on renewal of a charter for Civicorps School - Civicorps Elemantary School and denial of a renewed charter for Aviation High School.

The Board will get its first look at the facilities scenarios designed by OUSD consultant MKThink to help OUSD "rightsize" its portfolio of schools/classrooms. OUSD currently has capacity for about 10,000 more students than it enrolls. Another 20,000 school-aged children in Oakland don't attend OUSD schools. The Board will look at this presentation tomorrow night, and then make recommendation at its next meeting on March 23. The presentation outlines four scenarios for rightsizing:
 

1. Efficiency - operate the fewest sites possible (larger sites offer best economies of scale)
2. Remove portables - eliminate portables and concentrate resources on permanent buildings
3. Neighborhood - align capacity with neighborhood population and minimize overlap of site coverage areas
4. Choice - accommodate student preference patterns

The Board will consider an amendment to their November resolution asking AC Transit to make youth fare clipper cards available to all enrolled K-12 students, even if they are older than 19, and also apply youth fares to parent/family escorts of those children. The resolution states, "a significant number of OUSD students are so adversely impacted by the fare structure, which represents a $65/month increase, as to be denied access to a public education." OUSD also pays AC Transit for its services to certain students and some escorts of students and will be impacted by planned AC Transit fare increases. In the next few weeks the Family & Community Office (FCO) expects to finalize and implement a series of pilot strategies for obtaining and reloading the AC Transit "Clipper" Card. The strategies include student direct access on campuses to reload their own cards, office strategies to reload cards and a digital information exchange strategy where OUSD is responsible for providing transportation.

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