The City of Oakland, no shining light of fiscal management, has given us examples includes:
-Terminating many unfilled jobs (most of their job cuts actually came from such open positions. It doesn’t hurt anyone so is a no-brainer);
-Mayor’s voluntary cut, and City Councilmembers pay cuts to their offices;
-5% cut to all City employees earning $100K+;
-Requiring all contractors to take a 10% cut.
-Limits on all travel and meal expenses (I don’t know all the details on this one).

Some of these are big, some are small, but they all add up. Maybe OUSD is working or has already done some of these, in which case I would appreciate reading about them. But besides getting us the #’s, OUSD, Administration and the Board need to a) Show they’re being proactive; b) Show that they’re actually taking action we can SEE (again, if they are doing some of these we need to read about it); c) Accept that Central HQ needs to share meaningfully in the cuts this year, regardless of last year.

Without all of these, if the cuts that come down hit mostly Schools, Teachers & Principals (through layoffs), OUSD and the Board are going to hear about it anyway and then either suffer the consequences at the ballot box or backtrack, after the fact. Better to be proactive and show that Parents & Teachers have been heard. Then any other bitter medicine will be easier to swallow.

I realize I’ve left closing [failing small] schools and other difficult choices off my list. The examples I’ve given is, again, mostly easier, realistic cuts that the City has shown an example on…

For example, blaming President Obama for the country’s current financial strain makes about as much sense as, say, my being blamed for the springtime test scores of several dozen students who’d arrived at high school in the fall reading at third-grade level.

I wonder where all these rabid deficit hawks were hiding when his predecessor was rushing the country into a couple of huge wars with such little regard for how they’d be financed, immediately or in the coming decades when our country will, I hope, be taking far better care of our disabled veterans than we did and do with some of their predecessors who were bumbled into Vietnam.

Besides, I’d be a hypocrite if I found the “Barry” stuff irksome. There’s the First Amendment, for one thing, which as a citizen I revere, and which as a teacher I’ve sworn to defend and protect. But some years ago I also won a generous pair of nightclub tickets by phoning in to enter a spur-of-the-moment radio quiz announced over the UC Berkeley station. It was early in 2001, and the question was, “Who can tell us what the W stands for in our new president’s name?” Must have been a slow day at KALX, because I was the first caller, and when I answered “Wienertot!” the DJ said “That’s it. Contest over; you’re our winner.”

But on a more useful note, I wanted to let people know that our own local hero, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, is one of the guests on tonight’s Charlie Rose show. It will run again at midnight on KQED, and again tomorrow at noon. I only caught a sliver, so I’ll have to set the VCR, but she did express her own disdain at the kind of budget “recovery” that will come from extending tax cuts to millionaires.

By the way, our government could have saved much money, time, and aggravation by way of Ms. Lee’s health care plan, H.R.3000, which she introduced in June, 2009. Just one of many commonsense bills that make me proud and honored to live in her district.

http://lee.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=69&sectiontree=2,37,69

http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

katy the contracts passed in the last couple of months were never calculated in the pepperdine study

Really, we have no motive not to provide this information since the dominant narrative holds that OUSD spends an exorbitant and unreasonable amount of money on unnecessary consulting services. Whatever the actual numbers, at worst, releasing this data would only reinforce the general consensus and at best, it might change a few (very few) minds.

There’s no strategic reason to withhold the data so I don’t think the conspiracy theories play here, but I do acknowledge the information is overdue. I’ll sit down with Finance, Procurement and Labor Management tomorrow to see what we can provide in short order.

Or maybe they want a reasonable answer/solution worked out first?