This is a sampling of The Education Report, Katy Murphy’s Oakland schools blog. Read more at IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her at Twitter.com/KatyMurphy.
Feb. 18
Oakland schools, rather than the district’s headquarters, might absorb almost all of the budget cuts coming from the state this year, district staff tell us. The rationale? That the central office took the brunt of the reductions last year, sustaining two-thirds of the cuts.
Do you buy it?
Before you answer, get the facts in a new financial report published by the district and posted on the blog. It’s fascinating (for a financial report) because it slices the current and past-year’s expenses in so many ways.
About half of the cuts to the school district’s “unrestricted,” or general-purpose, fund and 56 percent of the cuts to the total general fund came from central services, according to the report.
Note: This isn’t the full picture. Slide 2 suggests that adult education programs are not included in that breakdown. (Adult schools took a $7 million hit last year; that has been counted as a “central services” cut in past accounting, though it arguably is not.) Early childhood education, food services, construction dollars and self insurance don’t appear to factor in either.