Oakland Unified School District

District Partner 2007

ERS partnered with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in 2007 to do a high-level analysis of the district’s resource use and highlight opportunities for reallocation to improve student learning.

Work Focus

• Identify central cost-cutting opportunities by comparing OUSD's central spending to other districts.
• Explore ways to maximize the use of categorical funds.
• Provide tools and training about research on effective resource use in schools to help inform and improve the process of creating and reviewing school budgets.

Some Results

• Findings showed that in very small schools, principals had greater constraint on resource use, mitigating the core intended purpose of “results-based budgeting” strategy.
• Finding also showed that the number of very small schools had the effect of diverting resources from instruction to school operations and administration.  In response, OUSD decided to develop a minimum school size policy to better manage sub-scale schools.
• From this work ERS developed a framework for understanding the resource-related impact of enrollment decline in urban districts which ERS shared with the broader reform community.