Oshkosh School Board and community discuss $6M in budget cuts

OSHKOSH, WI—(WISS)— The administration of the Oshkosh Area School District has proposed cutting more than 70 positions to address a $6 million budget shortfall for the 2026-2027 school year. Wednesday night, the administration, members of the school board, and over 150 people took part either as speakers or listeners in the discussion of the cuts.

The night started with a listening session in the cafeteria at Oshkosh North High School, where several teachers, community members, and a few students shared how they felt about the proposed cuts with the OASD Administration and a few school board members. 

Immediately following the listening session, the OASD Board of Education meeting boasted over an hour of public comment, again from teachers, parents, community members, and students.

Later in the meeting, OASD Superintendent Dr. Bryan Davis said the cuts are necessary to address a structural deficit and to right-size the school district in the wake of declining enrollment, state funding, and inflation. 

“We have an estimated $6 million deficit in 2026/27. We have to keep coming back to this. We have to figure out what our solution is to this issue,” Davis told the board. “There’s no dancing around it. We have to figure this out. We have to do it  in a timely fashion. And it needs to be something that’s sustainable as we’re moving forward.”

Proposed Cuts

According to Davis, 80% of the OASD budget is spent on staff salaries and benefits, making staffing cuts the most direct route to the $6 million reduction goal. 

The following cuts are part of Davis’ plan to reduce the budget by $6 million.

• 11 positions in the Central Office, including the elimination of the Director of Community Engagement and Equity and reducing the budget for technology and textbooks.
• 13.7 positions at the District Level, including one full-time and eight part-time driver education positions.
• 33.6 positions at the Secondary Level or Middle and High School Level, including 23.3 teaching positions for electives. The elective teacher positions would be eliminated by requiring teachers to hold class in six of the seven daily periods.
• 11.9 positions in the PreK and Elementary Level, including six teacher positions, which would be cut due to school consolidations.

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Of those who spoke at the school board meeting, just under half were students expressing concern about either losing electives or the amount of work their teachers would have to take on under the proposals. 

“No student wants to feel that their future is threatened by a cut to the budget of the school district,” said Eli Maloney, a junior at Oshkosh West. “We know that this cut will definitively cause teachers to leave this district leading to less extracurriculars offered within the classroom.”

“ It would be ridiculous for me to expect nothing to change in light of a $6 million cut. But what I don’t want to change and what would only hurt the district more is any reduction of the valuable opportunities students receive from these activities,” said Isaac Consdine-Buelow, junior at Oshkosh West. “So please, school board members, recognize the hard work teachers put in every day by maintaining the 0.2 FTE, in turn, maintaining the education of our district students.” 

Students also pleaded with the board to keep the Director of Community Engagement and Equity. One of those students is Micah Troedel, a senior at Oshkosh West.

“Through my high school career. I have been in the district when there both was and wasn’t a Director of Community Engagement Equity. And the big piece about that is that I’ve seen a stark difference in the opportunity provided to not only minority students, which is a big part of that, but to all students.

“So as a Director of Community Engagement, part of that role is to provide opportunity for students with businesses in the community and different programs that are being ran. But that equity piece has allowed students that look like me to have a lot more opportunity,” Troedel said. 

“Now, this also ties into academic achievement data.  Which is something that as a board, I would assume you’re very concerned with. Your black and brown students are some of the lowest-scoring students in our district and in our state overall,” Troedel continued. “Why are we choosing to cut the one position whose job is to focus on that? To me that sounds like it’s no longer a priority and that we’re shifting our focus back to other things.”

Teachers also made their opinions of the cuts known.

“Eliminating teaching positions and raising class sizes while insisting we are all in this together. And ‘Students First’ is not just contradictory, it’s insulting. It is a slap in the face to every teacher who shows up every day to do the work that no administrator has to do. Manage a room full of students. Meet their academic and emotional needs. Juggle changing expectations and absorb every new initiative,” said Michelle Jones, a Spanish teacher at Traeger Middle School. “To make these cuts while administration seemingly takes no reduction in pay positions or workload, seems to send a very clear message – That those closest to students are the ones easiest to sacrifice.”

School Board members

Davis’ plan did receive quite a bit of pushback from some School Board members. 

“ We’re looking at eliminating 70 positions, and we heard the angst in this community,” said Dr. Tim Hess. “I have a sense of, I feel like I need to know more. I need to understand more…I want a sense of knowing more what it is that we’re sacrificing? What other options are out there?”

Molly Smiltneek said she thought too much weight was put on cutting student-facing positions. 

“ I still have not heard a good explanation of why your (Davis) executive team…Why it feels untouched? I can’t defend this decision right now. Also, at a school level or district level, I feel like there has to be some more spaces within secretarial and support staff that just didn’t even seem to come into play here,” said Smiltneek.

Next Steps

Davis said he will take the feedback from the community and the Board, and, along with the executive team, will work over Christmas break to make adjustments to the recommendations. 

“We will work through the process, based on the feedback from the board, feedback from public comments, and make some modifications to the revisions. Again, at the end of the day, we’ve got a $6 million issue that we need to solve for next year. So that’s what we’re really focused on,” said Davis.

The updated recommendations will be delivered to the board in early January.

The OASD Board of Education will meet again on January 8th to work through the cuts and fine-tune the plan. It will then make its decision on the 2026-2027 budget reduction recommendations during its January 14th meeting.