Oakland Unified School District Closes 2025-26 Fiscal Year Stronger than Projected

Oakland — The Oakland Unified School District announced today that it finished the
year with $170.1 million in its General Fund and an unrestricted reserve of $32.3 million,
finishing $16.4 million ahead of what the District projected in March. District leaders presented
its unaudited actuals to the Board of Education on September 9.

The projections reflect the progress being made to put the District in a stronger financial position
to better serve students and families. District leaders also acknowledge it required implementing
significant reductions across the board.

"This turnaround happened because our Board was willing to make difficult decisions rather
than pass them along, and because our staff did the work," said Superintendent Dr. Denise
Saddler. "None of this came easily, and there is more ahead of us. What these closed books
show is that the direction is right."

In October 2025, the Board directed staff to prepare budget scenarios totaling $100 million in
adjustments. In December, presented with a choice between borrowing to bridge the gap and
making the reductions directly, the Board chose to make the reductions. As part of the reduction
plan, the Board approved the reduction of more than 400 certificated and classified positions,
alongside a retirement incentive that converted some layoffs into voluntary departures.

What the numbers show

• Every major spending category came in either at or under projection, including teacher salaries, classified staff salaries, benefits, supplies and services.
• The Local Control Funding Formula, the District's largest and steadiest source of revenue, came in above expectation.
• The District's single largest action redirected $43.3 million by identifying restricted resources that could legally cover costs already sitting in the General Fund, freeing unrestricted dollars to address the structural gap.
• Central office reductions produced $25 million.

What has not changed

District leaders are transparent about the limits of the results. While the figures reported are
unaudited, the District's independent audit will follow and the Alameda County Office of
Education will be responding to the District’s adopted budget on September 15th.

Oakland Unified also continues to carry a structural deficit. The District's multi-year projection
shows the fund balance declining in each of the next several years, with reserves sitting just
above the state minimum. For those reasons, the District intends to proceed with the full $30
million in reductions planned for 2026-27.

"Closing our books is not the same as finishing the work, and we are not stopping here," said
Tara Gard, Deputy Superintendent of Business and Operations. "We will continue with the
actions in our Financial Stabilization Plan because of where they lead. Oakland Unified should
be a district others look to, with a balanced budget, reserves that hold through a hard year, and
the ability to plan for our students well in advance instead of scrambling every spring. Getting
there means staying with the reductions we committed to. And we intend to."

The District will present another public update on the Financial Stabilization Plan to the Board of
Education and the community on Sept. 23.