Hey !

We at MSEG hope you are getting ready for a great weekend. On that note, we are holding an online public engagement tomorrow from 10am-12pm and would love to see you there! Our recent meetings have been jam-packed with new data and information about basic staffing and expenditures at school sites, and this will be the final opportunity to engage in an open conversation about what we’ve surfaced with us and the wider community. No registration needed, just come on in! (zoom link)

(Tomorrow will also be the No Kings Protest and we of course want as many folks to participate in that as possible, but we are hoping you’ll warm up for the march with some local civic engagement at our shared table with OUSD!)

Also: In case you haven’t seen them yet, we’ve published online tools backed by a partnership with district staff in order to support more transparency about staffing costs at schools. It’s an imperfect system but we hope it helps to show the community a more in-depth picture of what costs and allocations look like, and why. Specifically:

• How “Basic Staffing” is determined at all OUSD schools
• How much those allocations costs, based on averages
• Where that money is coming from, both from our base funding and beyond

We’re reaching more schools and families with every event, and we’re hoping you’ll help us to make this a well-attended capstone to this series of engagements. If you can’t make it in real time, we encourage you to engage using our online platform, which is available 24/7. 

Important Dates and Processes

MSEG is working with the Parent Student Advisory Committee (PSAC) to understand and publish shared facts as our work shifts gears this fall. The Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) is being rewritten this year, and along with the OUSD budgeting process there will need to be serious decisions made about our district’s priorities. 

These processes are going on right now, and for us to have a real voice in the discussion we need to continue engagement while presenting what the community has said to the board and district. This difficult work make a lot of progress in November, so we encourage you to attend the meeting or participate online as soon as possible. We’ll be closing surveys at the end of this month, so don’t wait! 

Save the Date! The culmination of our collective work will take place on Saturday November 14th. We will gather publicly to share everything we’ve learned since March, and to present our community with a comprehensive view of what we’re doing with their voices, and how we will make it impactful.

We hope to see you soon, and thank you for your continued dedication. 

Warm Regards

The OUSD MSEG Working Group