Alameda Unified Looks Toward a Future With Fewer Funds

At Tuesday night's school board meeting, the Alameda Unified School District outlined scenarios for closing and consolidating district schools in order to make up for ongoing cuts to state education funding and the failure of the Measure E parcel tax in June. 

All the plans involve closing about half the district's elementary schools and dramatically reconfiguring the high and middle schools to maximize capacity and minimize school sites and therefore costs.

Some plans call for the creation of large combined middle and high schools that would serve students grade seven through twelve. Another calls for the creation of a ninth grade academy at one site to serve all the district's ninth graders and the creation of a single high school to serve all students grades ten through twelve.

All the plans call for major alterations in attendance boundaries, increasing class size to 32 students per class in grades K-3,  and the closure at least five elementary schools.

"None of these options are crowd pleasers," said Assistant Superintendent Sean McPhetridge. "This was not fun work."

And school consolidation, says McPhetridge, is just a piece of the puzzle.

"The closures and cuts and consolidations will not solve AUSD's budget problems," said McPhetridge. "We would still need to make drastic cuts."

Major cuts have already been made, said McPhetridge, and, without another source of reliable revenue, more will need to be made. In the current school year, AUSD has made seven million in cuts, including adding eight furlough days for all district employees (for a savings this year of $2.1 million); increasing class size in kindergarten through third grade to 25 students per class (saving $900,000); redesigning the district office systems ($400,000); reducing school counselors ($500,000); and reducing administrative support for special education programs ($400,000).

"School consolidations are a small piece of the budget problem that we have," said AUSD Superintendent Kristen Vital. "To date we still don't even have a state budget."  Without a state budget, Alameda administrators don't even know exactly how much money they have for the current fiscal year.

You can see the scenarios for AUSD reconfiguration here. The board will host its first public hearing on a parcel tax structure on Sept. 21 at 6:30 p.m. in Kofman Auditorium. The entire schedule of meetings on school closings and consolidations and a parcel tax can be found at the end of this board packet. 

"As we go forward I do hope we can stay as united as possible," said Board President Ron Mooney. "And not pit ourselves against one another."