Finance and Budgeting Highlights of Year 1 Implementation

• Balancing and managing District financials to enable “no mid-year cuts” as of Dec 2011
• Facilitating a 5.3 percent increase in unrestricted funds for 2012-13 school/per pupil allocations
• Maintaining the 3 percent reserve
• Starting the 2010-11 full financial audit with the State Controller Office
• Implementing the Early Retirement Program successfully, with approximately 300 participants

After a year of engagement through the Results-Based Budgeting (RBB) Task Force and other venues, we have identified our need to have a program-based, prioritized budgeting process for all of our schools and departments.

Instead of focusing on how and where to cut our budget, we need to focus our efforts on building and maintaining effective programs, and prioritize our strategic actions to ensure we are using our resources effectively and prudently. Our goal is to ensure that our budgeting choices are about investments in Oakland students, and not reactive to fiscal instability.