With a projected budget shortfall of $95 million next year, Oakland Unified School District’s (OUSD) latest plan to close schools would trim costly overhead. The district has lost over 2,200 students since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—six schools have lost at least 20 percent of their enrollment. But school closures are contentious, and a similar attempt failed in 2022 after an uproar led to board members being recalled.
“We need more [schools] not less,” protested a speaker at a recent board meeting. While it’s unclear why the shrinking district would need additional schools, the vocal opposition made trustees think twice before going on the record, instead punting on a vote to merge ten schools into five.
School closure battles like Oakland’s are playing out across California. Statewide, public schools lost 5.1 percent of their students between the 2019–2020 school year and the 2022–2023 school year, and the National Center for Education Statistics projects that they’ll lose another 15.7 percent by the 2031–2032 school year. Birth rates are falling, and parents are increasingly seeking alternatives to traditional public schools, such as homeschooling, private schools, and microschools.