HUSD Budget Improves Despite Cash Issues

Personnel Issue Spills Into Public

In advance of a Closed Session agenda item, current and former HUSD teachers spoke in support of Mt. Eden History teacher Annie Mladinich. The issue appeared to be related to an incident that allegedly occurred in March where a then-unnamed teacher had, according to some parents, referred to Catholics as “weird.” At a March 2025 School Board Meeting, multiple parents took to public comment—led by frequent public commenter, Araceli Orozco—with signs bearing slogans like “I’m Catholic and I’m not weird.”

At the time, no mention was made of the incident, but during her comment at this meeting, Ms. Orozco said, “This teacher asked their classroom ‘Who’s Catholic?’ and said that Catholics are weird. And that Catholics only have kids to have a lot of babies.” Based on the comments from other teachers, Mladinich—who made local news in 2023 for speaking out against a Mt. Eden teacher who was promoting Holocaust denialism—was put on leave over the incident and has not been in the classroom this school year.

However, Ms. Mladinich’s name was not listed in the agenda item in any way, so it’s unclear how the teachers knew to show up and show their support. Ms. Orozco took to public comment later in the meeting to highlight the discrepancy. “Are we then allowed to say names or is this a special privilege that teachers get and not community members?” she asked the Board.

Neither the Board nor District Staff responded to the question.

Good Financial News For School District

During their most recent Board Meeting, the Hayward Unified School District (HUSD) Board of Trustees received news that the District closed FY 25 with over $3,000,000 more in savings than expected. This is good news for the District, which was forced to enact drastic cost-cutting measures last fiscal year in order to keep afloat.

The District has a requirement to maintain a 3% reserve balance—which allows it to ride out economic uncertainty and smooth out how cash is distributed to the District—but had predicted to finish FY 25 below that threshold. “We spent the summer in the business office really going through and scrubbing every line in our budget,” Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Amy Nichols said.

The savings come from two different places: about $1,250,000 in extra revenue from leases of surplus property and $1,300,000 in savings in the Special Education program. For the extra revenue, Ms. Nichols said, “We found additional dollars to bill our… tenants for.” The savings in Special Education came from relying less on contracted services and more on internal paraeducators, which were part of a change in District hiring strategies.

Importantly for the District’s finances, Ms. Nichols predicted that the savings will be baked into the budgets going forward. “I am seeing that many of these improvements will actually carry forward into our ongoing budgets,” she said. Business Office priorities include monitoring the budget, with special attention to overtime, hourly, substitute, and stipend expenses.

This good news, unfortunately, wasn’t realized in time for the Alameda County Office of Education’s assessment of the District FY 26 Budget. However, Ms. Nichols remained confident that HUSD will receive a Conditional budget approval from the ACOE. A more thorough budget update is due to the Board of Trustees in December.

The District is still slated to take out a short-term loan from the ACOE in order to even out their cash flow. Due to how property tax revenue is disbursed to the District, which doesn’t arrive until December, the District is taking out a $30,000,000 loan, with effectively no interest, to be able to pay their bills. However, the District plans to repay the loan by April 2026 and will spend the year planning how to grow the reserves to avoid needing a future loan.

Some Anxiety About The Loan

Trustee Oquenda asked for further clarification around why the District needed the loan—which is to solve a cash-flow issue—but Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo worried about how the money will be viewed by Staff and labor groups. “I’m nervous,” he said, about the loan being misinterpreted as additional funds, not a cash-flow solution.

Trustee Prada asked for assurances that the District will have the money needed to repay the loan in April, like planned. Ms. Nichols stressed that this is one of the reasons why it’s important to stick to the budget and why the Business Office is trying to find ways to grow the reserves. If the District has enough money in reserve, a loan wouldn’t be necessary.

Special Education’s Massive Savings

Trustee Rawdon asked, “How did we let [Special Education] balloon to $1,300,000 in the first place?” With that much savings, some on the Board were concerned that there might have been a reduction in service. Superintendent Chen Wu Fernandez stressed that services weren’t cut, but that costs were saved by using HUSD staff as opposed to contracted services.

“The reduction in budget was simply a closer look at… the usage of internal paras versus external paras,” she said. “These cost savings are realized from that.” Superintendent Wu-Fernandez also said that additional hiring was possibly by streamlining the hiring process—centralizing it at the District Office as opposed to having individual school sites managing a hiring process. “Centralizing has had a huge impact in terms of our ability to be able to support sites… and also to streamline the process.”

$200 Million In Bond Money Coming To HUSD

In March of 2024, Hayward voters passed Measure I, which allowed HUSD to take out a bond to fund projects at the cost of a minor increase to property taxes. The Board of Trustees voted recently to approve the most recent tranche of money, which will yield $200,000,000.

For those who don’t know the details of how bonds work, a bond is essentially a loan that HUSD is taking out and repaying with our tax dollars. The District has already issued 4 bonds since 2008, including Measure I. The financial manager of the bond refinanced the existing bonds to take advantage of historically low interest rates and save property holders around $4,700,000.

This tranche of money will be used to fund the construction of a new Bret Harte School ($150,000,000), complete some Measure H projects ($30,000,000), and do District-wide infrastructure repairs and classroom modernizations ($20,000,000). The loan will be paid back over 30 years with an estimated final cost of around $460,000,000. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s over twice as much as is being borrowed, with $1.30 in interest having to be paid for every $1 loaned out.

The funds should be in the District’s coffers by late November, after it gets approval from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. The funds all need to be spent or encumbered within three years, and the District can do another bond sale in 2027 and another in 2029.

Bruckner-Carrillo Concerned About Labor

The only real discussion came from Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo who expressed concern about not involving labor groups, including the Building and Construction Trades, in the bond plans. “Hayward Unified School District placed a bond measure on the ballot without talking to the people that are going to be building these buildings,” he said, “working in these buildings.”

He highlighted that multiple companies involved in HUSD contracts that use bond money are from out of State or out of town. He mentioned the term “PSA,” which likely stands for Project Stabilization Agreement, multiple times, though it appeared to be in reference to negotiations that occurred outside of public meetings. Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo also alluded to an idea that Measure I money was intended to only be used to pay for local labor—presumably a reference to the Ballot language “all funds staying local.”

An Avalanche Of Consent Items

Trustee Rawdon took the time to pull a number of Consent Item contracts related to programs for the Youth Enrichment Program (YEP). The items all appeared to be contracts for services that will be provided to YEP programs across the district, including a self-defense course offered by Osorio Training Center.

Trustee Rawdon’s prepared statement compared the White House Rose Garden Club event, and how Federal dollars are being spent, to how HUSD is choosing to fund certain programs over visual and performing arts (VAPA) programs. “I couldn’t help but draw parallels,” he said, “between this and the recent choices that we’ve made at HUSD when it comes to our local solvency plan… We have to explain to the children of Treeview Elementary why they cannot have their afterschool choir program this year because we made a choice to fund a class for boxing and self defense conditioning instead.”

Despite recognizing that funding for certain programs comes from different sources, Trustee Rawdon expressed disappointment that Prop 28 funding was redirected at the expense of VAPA programs. “We are making choices,” he said, “we are very creative when we want to be. I cannot consciously vote for something I feel is taking priority over real educational choices that we could have made.”

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Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that the YEP funding was specifically for enrichment programs for YEP programs, but that some of the money could be used for afterschool programs at Treeview in the future. “I look forward to the day I see that happening,” Trustee Rawdon said, “But until then, I can’t bring myself to prioritize some of these things.”

Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo appeared sympathetic to Trustee Rawdon’s concerns. “I echo Trustee Rawdon’s call for being creative,” he said, and was concerned about funds being spent on new programs over keeping existing ones.

But Trustee Prada pushed back on the idea that VAPA programs and a self-defense program should be viewed as competing. “It really does target a vulnerable population,” she said. She highlighted that different programs appeal to different populations and sometimes engage people in culturally relevant education. She highlighted Capoeira as a martial art that also includes music and dance, on top of being culturally important to the Afro-Brazillian population.

“While I understand the hit to VAPA, I also want to have space and empathy for many underserved communities that don’t have access to VAPA,” Trustee Prada said. She hinted that English Language Learners are not able to receive VAPA programming, a group which is a large population in HUSD schools.

Meeting Length Causes Sparks Again

HUSD Board of Trustee meetings are scheduled to end at 10:30 every night. However, they frequently run late and need extension. This time, Trustee Rawdon wasn’t having it. “I don’t’ want to keep doing this,” he said. “Extending our meetings.” When Chair Bufete pressed for other time suggestions, Trustee Rawdon countered, “It doesn’t have to be unanimous, Peter.”

Trustee Oquenda took aim at how many consent items had been pulled. “We have important items in closed session,” she said, “and I would encourage Board Members to be mindful of pulling items on consent if they’re concerned about extending meetings.”

Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo pushed back. “I also think every one is entitled to ask questions on this board,” he said. “And I also believe that as a body we do not meet frequently enough. Look at neighboring school districts they meet much more frequently and then they also get out—” Chair Bufete interrupted, “Do you want to extend the meeting or not? Please.”

Araceli Orozco, who had pulled every single contract on the consent calendar, took her time for public comment to stress that she only did it to make a point. “I was trying to make a point,” she said. “We need to know if these programs are really working. Anybody could come and make you stay until the person wants to pull out. So please, have more meetings. Have more discussion. Ask more questions.”

Contract Organization Issues

Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo pulled a contract with CORE Learning Inc. with concern about both how it was presented to the Board and whether it supports English Language Learners (ELLs). “I have heard some feedback that this CORE traditionally leaves out our English Language Learners,” he said, “What the Staff response leads me to believe is that this work does support our ELL students.”

However Staff stressed, in a very roundabout way, that ELL students would be supported in some way. “Our multi-lingual learners are supported as well,” they said. But Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo continued to press for the contract to be changed to reflect the fact that the vendor already has a large contract with HUSD—over $100,000—and this is an addition to that. Chair Bufete agreed that it would be helpful to have the item changed to reflect that reality.

But Trustee Oquenda pushed back on the idea. “I don’t really understand why we would undermine this site’s decision to use this route to support their staff and training their staff. I just think these are very dangerous precedents to be setting,” she said. Chair Bufete still agreed with Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo’s point, but said, “I don’t believe we should delay services to these children.”

Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo again stressed the impact on ELL students. “I sit on DELAC (District English Learner Advisory Committee),” he said. But then pushed back on how the item was presented. “Our governance team has not given this board time,” he said. “The decision is made for us.” The contract went into effect 4 days after the meeting, so any delay could have serious implications for the contract.

Using Bond Funds Locally

Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo took aim at a number of contracts granted to Managed Facility Solutions, and used it to bring up the issue of the District not using union labor in its contracts and hiring out-of-town companies instead of local ones. “Movers that are union are represented by Teamsters,” he said. “These are not Teamsters workers.” He said that the company, from San Jose, paid prevailing wages but that their workers don’t undergo Union safety training and aren’t local.

“I feel that we had an opportunity with a $550,000,000 bond to put our families to work,” he said, in apparent reference to Measure I bond funds. “To make sure that, regardless of what’s going on in the world, at least our families are able to put food on the table for their kids. I voted for Measure I… to make sure that the people that do the work are union, that they’re local families.”

Assistant Superintendent Nichols stressed that the process was to put the bid out as a single project that would award multiple contracts. The need for multiple contracts is because the work happens at multiple sites and it helps track how money is spent and the level of work needed. “Putting out a single bid and awarding multiple contracts is common and it is legal and allowed,” she said.

Ms. Nichols encouraged the Board to consider making policy changes that would bring about their desired outcome. “The district doesn’t have those,” she said, “which means the district’s duty is to award contracts to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder in a bid process.”

Trustee Oquenda said that the District already has a process whereby preference is given to union contracts and local workers, and that it might be helpful for Staff to find the specific policy and provide a copy to Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo.

However, Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo said that the current policy was insufficient, especially in this instance. The policy has a $1,000,000 threshold—much like the one for the City of Hayward—”And when you bid the contract as six different contracts, it is therefore six separate thresholds that have to reach $1,000,000 in order for it to kick in,” he said.

The contracts passed 4:1, with Bruckner-Carrillo against.