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The East Oakland school of the Arts at Castlemont is losing 22 percent of its positions next year, according to a new district report. Westlake Middle School, United for Success Academy, Sankofa Academy and Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy — to name a few — also plan to make deep staffing cuts that exceed their enrollment declines.

For the first time since Oakland adopted its controversial school-based budgeting system, the school district’s financial department has made public school-by-school reports. The one-page documents include projected changes in enrollment, revenues, spending and staffing levels. In other words, they show the effects of the state budget cuts and enrollment decline at the school level.

Photo Caption: “Due to budget constraints, ALL employees are expected to grow their own pencils.”

A word of caution when looking through these documents: Jason Willis, OUSD’s budget director, says the drop in income and spending from last year to this year looks bigger than it really is because more “carry over” money will likely be added to some of those categories in the fall.

A more reliable indicator? The change in staffing levels, which can be found in the lower right-hand corner under the box titled “Total Funded FTE.” Willis noted that school administrators normally cut everything possible before reducing staff, so that books and supplies will take a large hit (but not quite so large as it looks on the sheet).

Not all schools are cutting teachers and support staff. Edna Brewer Middle School expects to gain just 11 students, and to boost its staffing levels by 4.5 positions. ASCEND’s budget adds 3.4 positions.

Take a look for yourself, through the above link, and let us know what you find.

image from Scuzzi’s site at flickr.com/creativecommons

PaulineZ brings up a good question in the comments:

Per the Chronicle 6/28, Edgerly will collect a pension of more than $150,000 a year. How can that be in a city as “poor” as Oakland

Okay, sometimes I wonder if people really don’t get why Oakland doesn’t have any money. I’m not saying that to be snotty or judgmental, it’s just that the problem is so self-evident to me. But I shouldn’t assume that it is for everyone, since it isn’t like this gets spelled out clear as day in the newspaper. Anyway, for those who don’t know, I’m going to do so right now.

The reason that service in this city gets cut even as revenues rise is because of the costs of city employees. That includes general compensation, benefits, and pensions. City employees get annual cost of living increases, negotiated into our agreements with the union. The cost of providing medical coverage has risen astronomically over recent years. The private sector, in many cases, has dealt with this by significantly increasing employee contributions and cutting coverage. Few companies provide pensions any longer. But the City does, and our pensions obligations are staggering, and rising every year.

Roughly 75% of the General Purpose Fund costs go to personnel. We’re talking about pre-negotiated salary increases of as much as 4-5% annually, increased retirement plan premiums due to increased pension benefits, and medical costs rising 16-18% annually.

And that’s why we have no money. Some people would say that such a situation is unfair to the taxpayers - City employees, in most positions anyway, are generally paid better than they would be for the equivalent job or for their skill set in the private sector. (The reverse is true for high ranking positions.) Their compensation in terms of benefits and retirement is certainly significantly higher than could be expected in the private sector. And the people of Oakland suffer for this in the form of reduced service delivery for their money. Others would argue that the City should lead by example, and that poor compensation in the private sector does not make it okay to provide civil servants with anything less than what is required to live here, and that we want to see in the types of jobs we attract. Both arguments have merit. I’m not taking a position on either side here, just pointing out that people want to know where the money goes, and that’s where it goes.

While I was out reporting on the Silence the Violence event, I met Deelah a young female performing arts activists who told me about the first Tupac summer camp being held Oakland. I was so excited to hear about it especially because I love Tupac's music (California Love is one of my favorite songs) and I also was curious to learn about what kinds of activities went on at the camp.

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OaklandNews is heading to the hills a few days. We typically hand-roll our news around here (few things are automated). But we’ve tweaked the machinery so that a few blogs will have their headlines published automatically while we’re gone. Alas, we can’t do that with most blogs. So posting will be lighter than normal for a few days. Back soon, tan, rested and ready.

Below you’ll find 2007 and 2008 numbers reported for Part I crimes in Oakland as of June 26th (xls!).

Jack Richardson was an old-school cop with bull-dog determination to solve crimes. And one cold case in particular hounded him to the end.

Just days before he died at age 90 on June 12 as the result of a fall, he told friends he was still frustrated by the old Martin case, the bizarre double murder that stunned Oakland in 1964 when the mother and daughter of a prominent Oakland family were slain in their home.

Montclarions are good ‘ole American gas guzzlers, with commuter woes!  We talk a good game about being green, but I see villagers pouring onto the highways daily.

Here are sobering stats about everyone living in the 94611 zip.  Some 61% of residents are employed outside Alameda County, and 25% spend more than 45 minutes getting to work.

it’s so easy to get bogged down.  can’t do this, can’t do that.  too many distractions, too much B.S.

time to can the excuses and get serious.  WOBO will be working extra hard in the coming months on two priority campaigns - and we want you to join us!

They say all politics is local, and local politics these days is all about crime. This last election had everyone outdoing each other with promises to hire more police officers. But speaking on an even more local scale–namely, my block–crime is pretty low on my list of priorities. It’s just not something I worry about anymore.

One of my friends the other night said that I didn’t really live in Oakland. Giving that some thought, I replied that I lived in an Oakland of the mind. True, true-I tend to avoid looking at the negative things (or at least dwelling on them) and I purposely drive my car on certain routes that will avoid the Ghettolicious aspects of this town. I sometimes think I live in a slightly skewed third world country that is populated by zombies. Sometimes it feels like Bohemian heaven. And sometimes it just seems like a place where nothing ever really happens (wait-that was a refrain from a Talking Heads song about Heaven).

Make a special trip to Montclair Village this weekend, for your art fix.

The 33rd Annual Fine Arts Sidewalk Festival is returning to all the sidewalks, streets, nooks and crannies.  The festival runs through Sunday, between 10am-5pm daily.

Usually free summer festivals have a lot of junky stuff.  Montclair’s festival is juried by Pacific Fine Arts, who hand-selects 90 artists and seems to have great taste.  To whet your appetite, below are a few pieces by exhibitors.

I’ve yet to weigh in on Oakland’s latest mess, and I’m not sure I have much to say that hasn’t already been said. There’s been a lot of talk in the blogoaksphere this week about the Deborah Edgerly saga, and I’ve been really impressed by the reporting of dto510 and Zennie Abraham, who often shared updates before the mainstream media reported. So here’s what they had to say…

Mayor Ron Dellums placed City Administrator Deborah Edgerly on paid administrative leave until her July 31 retirement date Friday amid allegations Edgerly interfered with a police investigation.

Related: Oakland’s embattled city administrator put on leave amid investigation, San Francisco Chronicle

And the guy who doesn’t write reports the Council asks for if he doesn’t feel like it is now in charge! Check it out on Future Oakland. I love this town.

Supporters of Ignacio de la Fuente and Pat Kernighan received emails in the last 18 hours calling for City Administrator Deborah Edgerly to be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. The councilmembers both note that the Council has no authority over the administrator, and say that they feel they have to tell the public of their concerns because the mayor is not listening. Both proposed legislation to address some of the issues raised by the Edgerly affair. Ignacio wrote:

On Tuesday, July 8, the City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee will discuss master-developer proposals for the Oakland Army Base. The staff report with the review panel’s feedback and summaries of the proposals is available here (PDF). Abridged proposals are available here, the full proposals must be picked up in hard copy from City Hall.

Why let “Pomp and Circumstance” set the tone of a graduation ceremony when you can strut into the gym to an upbeat tune composed and played by your own classmates?

This year, a group of Claremont Middle School kids got together and composed a theme song titled “Celebrate (Jamba Juice),” which the full band played at the eighth-grade promotion.

So everyone is still all caught up in the Edgerly scandal and nobody seems to want to talk about anything else. Meanwhile, I’m still sitting by myself in the corner all upset about structural flaws in Oakland’s government that make it difficult for elected officials to accomplish anything. And a perfect example of the sort of disfunction I’m complaining about just happened to fall into my lap at Tuesday’s CED committee meeting.