Help
A participatory process is a sequence of participatory activities (e.g. first filling out a survey, then making proposals, discussing them in face-to-face or virtual meetings, and finally prioritizing them) with the aim of defining and making a decision on a specific topic.
Examples of participatory processes are: a process of electing committee members (where candidatures are first presented, then debated and finally a candidacy is chosen), participatory budgets (where proposals are made, valued economically and voted on with the money available), a strategic planning process, the collaborative drafting of a regulation or norm, the design of an urban space or the production of a public policy plan.
Phase Four Engagement Planning
Identifying the Conditions for Meaningful Community Engagement
About this process
Prepare for Phase 4 of the OUSD Financial Stabilization Plan (Rebuild), set to begin in the Fall of 2026.
OUSD is embarking on a multi-year effort to fix our district's budget and to keep local control and oversight of our schools. This financial stabilization plan consists of four major phases that run from late 2025 into 2027-28 and beyond. Our goal is to assist with the planning of Phase 4 of by shaping how community engagement and decision-making should look to inform the future of our district.
Background
In January of 2025, the Parent and Student Advisory Committee (PSAC) identified four questions that everyone in OUSD must help answer to address the financial challenges of our district:
What resources and services are managed through our central budget and departments? What in our centralized budget is most essential to students, schools, and OUSD as a whole?
What resources and services are managed through school budgets or allocated directly to specific schools? How and why are those resources and services assigned to specific schools? What in our school allocations is most essential to students?
How many schools should OUSD operate, of what kind, of what minimum or maximum size, and where? What should be our landscape of schools? What combination of schools would best serve OUSD students? [This conversation also includes the use of vacant facilities.]
How could we generate additional resources for our students?
In Spring of 2026, we will leverage the meetings of PSAC to engage with the first of the 4 questions.
Reference: ousd-mseg-PART-2026-04-1