OUSD, Wtf?! Part II

This is the second in a four-part series about the Ojai Unified School District's ongoing financial crisis.

This story was originally published in the VORTEX on March 24, 2023. Read Part III.

“The financial reality of the District is we need to close two schools.” 

That was former Ojai Unified School District (OUSD) Board President Linda Taylor, a retired Nordhoff High School art teacher, speaking from a microphone in the Matilija auditorium back in 2016. I covered the meeting as a reporter for the Ojai Valley News. 

Taylor’s comments came as her school board colleagues voted to keep each of Ojai’s five elementary schools open. Following the Board’s 4-1 vote (Taylor’s was the lone vote in opposition; she declined to run for reelection later that year), then-OUSD Superintendent Hank Banger declared, “the issue is being put to rest by this Board.” He retired the next year.

Most observers agree that OUSD’s financial predicament is one that moved at a gentle pace for decades; declining enrollment and the associated decline in state funding* was a truth any close observer could recognize (OUSD enrol…