During its meeting on Tuesday, November 18, the Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) Board of Education held a budget workshop as part of a comprehensive look into the district’s revenues and expenditures over the next three school years, which was informed by ongoing contract negotiations between AUSD and its employee organizations.
This was Carrie Hahnel’s first meeting as a Board Trustee, having been unanimously appointed by the Board on November 14 to fill the seat left vacant by Meleah Hall, who resigned in September. An education consultant and researcher, Hahnel is an expert in education policy and finance who has worked with local and national educational organizations. In Alameda, Hahnel has served on AUSD’s parcel tax oversight committees and the Maya Lin School Site Council, and also volunteered for the Measure A and Measure E campaigns in 2020 and 2024, respectively.
As part of her application submitted to the board, Hahnel said that her “highest priority as a board member would be to ensure that AUSD meets the needs of all learners while preparing every student to thrive in an increasingly complex and dynamic world.”
Chosen from a pool of six applicants, Hahnel was one of two finalists interviewed by the Board on November 14. The other finalist was Joyce Boyd, who last ran for the Board in November 2024 and is a former contributor to the Alameda Post. The meeting on November 18 kicked off with Superintendent Pasquale Scuderi swearing in Hahnel.
During public comment, several members of the Alameda Education Association (AEA)—which represents teachers, counselors, and other AUSD staff—took to the podium to push for higher salaries. AUSD and AEA are currently in the midst of contract negotiations, but earlier that day, the district published a notice that discussions were at an “impasse.” AUSD has offered a 2.3% salary increase for the current year, plus a monthly contribution towards individual health plans. Meanwhile, AEA has asked for 9% ongoing starting in 2025-26, along with additional stipulations for health and retirement benefits.
“We genuinely know that you are grateful for what we do for this community,” said Ryan Brazil, a fourth and fifth grade combo teacher at Love Elementary School. “But we don’t need another thank you, we need a budget that proves you mean it.”
The ongoing negotiations influenced several elements of the budget workshop focused on AUSD’s Multiyear Projections (MYP), which is a living document that offers an outlook on how the district’s current budgeting plan may perform over the next three years. As part of the workshop, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Shariq Khan walked through the district’s revenues, which are made up of unrestricted and restricted funds. Unrestricted dollars can be spent on any educational purpose and is based on the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) and AUSD’s average daily attendance, while restricted dollars are earmarked for specific programs, like special education, and often come from grants. When it comes to forecasting future revenues, Khan and his team make assumptions about future student enrollment numbers based on socioeconomic factors and trends.
On the expenditures side, about 75% of the district’s general fund is spent on benefits and salaries, while the remaining portion is set aside for various supplies and services. Khan determined that AUSD’s spending of its unrestricted and combined general fund is roughly similar to the amount other districts in Alameda County spend on items such as salaries, benefits, and supplies.
However, AUSD has notably higher expenditures on contracted services in the special education (SPED) program, at about $6.2 million higher than the county average. These expenditures include contracts to provide student transportation and other support services, as well as paraprofessional positions that have been contracted out due to difficulties in hiring permanent staff. Khan suggested further work is needed to determine if it is the underpaying of salaries that increases AUSD’s reliance on contracted services, or if the cost of contracted services is so high that it ends up deflating salaries.
Next, Khan presented the MYP for the next three years, updated from the June 2025 draft to include latest assumptions for additional revenue, positions, and assignments. By the end of the 2027-2028 school year, the projected ending fund balance is expected to be about $20.7 million, which represents an $8.7 million overall decrease. However, Khan emphasized that this does not mean that the district is just sitting on money, but rather is maintaining a careful balance between a strategic drawdown of annual funds while ensuring a financially viable future.
Khan also presented an alternate MYP that reflects AUSD’s finances if AEA’s compensation asks were accepted. That, according to his calculations, would result in a negative fund balance as soon as the end of the next school year and would put AUSD further into the red by an additional $15 million each year.
“If what we approved was everything that our partners are asking for, next year we will need to recognize a $4.46 million deficit in our budget,” summarized Clerk Heather Little. “To me that’s positions, that’s schools, that’s programming, that’s our athletics. And that’s just the one year.”
That type of deficit spending, several other board members reflected, is exactly what got neighboring school districts—many of which are facing monumental budget deficits and school closures—into trouble. When districts cannot follow through on their plans and instead kick difficult decisions down the road, they often snowball into major cuts or school closures, Khan explained.
Public commenters on the item included AEA members who tried to offer tangible strategies to bridge the negotiation gap. Joanna Katz, a general education teacher at Paden Elementary School, described how disruptive and inefficient contracted paraprofessionals can be for both teachers and students, and suggested updating hiring practices and salaries to attract permanent staff.
“That is not money well spent. The few paraprofessionals that are invested in the district know these kids over multiple years,” said Katz. “The contractors that just come in…are not invested in the work, they don’t really know what they’re doing, and it takes longer…to explain to them what to do.”
The Board’s next meeting will be on Tuesday, December 9.
Ken Der is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Ken-Der.
