Nine hundred and nine Ojai kids reported to Nordhoff Junior High and High School¹ for their first day of school on August 23. The addition of the 7th and 8th graders to campus swelled its population to numbers unseen in more than a decade — the last time the school hosted more than 1,000 students was during the 2009-10 school year. In 2005, when I completed high school at Nordhoff (a horrifying near-twenty years ago), 1330 students were on campus — and remember, that was just four grades. 

In total, the Ojai Unified School District (OUSD) welcomed 2,080 students back to the classroom for the 2023-24 school year. According to newly appointed OUSD Superintendent Dr. Sherrill Knox, enrollment declined by 3% from the year prior. The year before (2021-22), student numbers declined by 4%. One thing we can take from this is that the expected exodus of OUSD students due to the financial crisis and subsequent reorganization did not come to pass.

However, enrollment numbers continue to decline steadily and there’s no telling when our student population numbers will stabilize. Our best guess, a 2022 enrollment projection report commissioned by OUSD, theorized the district would host approximately 2,100 students in the 2023-24 year — so far, so good — and continue declining to some 1,800 in the 2031-32 school year. But before you place too much faith in these projection numbers, let me warn you: as we move further into the future, we are counting more and more children who aren’t yet born.

But we already know the story of declining enrollment. The question at hand today concerns the future. Now that we’ve closed two schools and parted ways with numerous long-time staff members, is OUSD’s financial crisis over? My educated assessment is this: not really. 

But before we get into the future, let me catch you up to the present because OUSD kept busy during the summer months.

¹ That’s what we’re calling it, for now. Principal Monson said he was wary of instituting a name change in light of public response to “Legacy High.”

At the end of June, OUSD’s Board of Trustees (we’ll call them the School Board moving forward) approved long-awaited raises for its certificated and classified staff (hooray!). Both of the district’s unions — the Ojai Federation of Teachers (OFT), led by OUSD sixth grade teacher Richard Byrd, and CSEA 333, led by long-time OUSD grounds maintenance worker Chuck Crawford — won 7% increases to their salary schedules. All in all, the salary increases represent a $1.4 million expenditure for OUSD in the 2023-24 school year.

The Ventura County Office of Education (VCOE) chimed in on the staff raises right ahead of the Board’s vote to approve the revised contracts. VCOE’s comuniqué was not a celebration of the increase in pay, but a warning about its cost. According to their read of OUSD’s 2023-24 budget (which projects revenues and expenditures through the 2025-26 school year), with the staff raises, the district would be on track for a million dollars² in deficit spending by the 2024-25 school year. 

I addressed the projected shortfall with Superintendent Knox in early August. “It’s looking better for a couple of reasons,” she said. Knox explained that once OUSD staff looked at the specifics of the employees receiving raises — like which salary schedule they’re in and which funds they’re paid out of — the shortfall became far less significant. “The other thing that happened is we have had a lot of experienced teachers who were on the high end of this salary scale making 60, 70, $80,000 a year, and now we are having a lot of new teachers come in that are only making $50,000 a year… We actually saw a lot of savings in the turnover.” 

OUSD’s 45-Day Budget Revision did indeed reveal that OUSD saved more money than initially expected when some of its most experienced teachers resigned or retired at the end of the last school year — about $900,000. I think about it this way: OUSD’s financial crisis, school reconfiguration, and subsequent layoff notices compelled many experienced teachers to exit. OUSD then hired less experienced teachers in their places — then gave them a raise. It feels a little nonsensical, but such is school finance.

Even given more favorable budgetary conditions, I think it’s fair to say that OUSD remains on edge.

² $938,816, to be quite specific.

MEET SHERRILL KNOX

Freshly-promoted OUSD Superintendent Dr. Sherrill Knox is the first of her kind in living memory:³ an OUSD executive who is a graduate (Nordhoff Class of 1995) and a former OUSD teacher and a principal.⁴ Today, she’s the parent of an OUSD seventh grader and a ninth grader. Knox’s younger child, who is on the autism spectrum, receives OUSD special education services.⁵

Knox grew up in Ojai — her family moved to the valley when she was five years old. And that’s why she took the job. “I can’t imagine that I would ever want to be a superintendent in any other district,” she said when I asked if a superintendency was something she had aspired to. (The answer to that question was no.) “Sometimes you just feel called to leadership,” she said. “This is my community.”

Her history in OUSD is not the only thing distinguishing Knox: critically, she has the support of OUSD teachers. As OFT President Richard Byrd told me, “She’s highly respected by staff, and she has a lot of integrity. What more could we ask for?”

During a wide-ranging conversation in early August, Knox told me that one of her primary challenges is helping the district “shrink gracefully.” She added, “I would like for us to be forward-thinking in our decision-making and planning for continued declining enrollment.”

I asked Knox what she thought distinguished her from former superintendent Dr. Tiffany Morse⁶ — with whom Knox worked closely as an assistant superintendent. Morse’s gifts, Knox said, are in innovation. “I feel like I am much more about creating stability while making progress,” she added.

Knox is joined in the superintendency by a long-awaited chief budget officer (CBO) — a position that was unfilled for long stretches during Morse’s time in office. The Board voted unanimously to offer Betsy George, a former Ventura Unified School District assistant superintendent of business services, a $180,000 contract with the position. Knox’s own three-year contract comes with a $190,000 salary. 

For Knox, OUSD’s financial crisis underscored the importance of George’s position. “I think the investment in a high-quality CBO is really imperative. Especially for a district like ours where we don’t have a cushion… You can’t afford a million-dollar error, and a million-dollar error is easy to come by.”⁶

³  By living memory, I mean the collective memories of Trustee Kathy Smith, Human Resources Director Angie Genasci, and long-time OUSD Administrator Susana Arce. 

⁴  Knox taught English and Spanish at Nordhoff from 1999-2005. Later, she was the principal of Topa Topa Elementary from 2014 to 2017.

⁵ I mention this because I’m the sister of a disabled brother. I know it’s a meaningful detail for families with disabled children. 

⁶ Morse declined to be interviewed for this piece.

⁷ OUSD’s 2023-24 total General Fund spending plan is approximately $32 million. A “million dollar error” equates to about 3% of the total budget.

THE SURPLUS PROPERTY DEBATE COMES ‘ROUND AGAIN

The title of this section kind of says it all: good lord, here we go again. What should become of San Antonio Elementary School — now vacant, Matilija Junior High School — mostly vacant, and the district’s historic downtown headquarters and so-called “Legacy High School”⁷ at 414 East Ojai Avenue? The Board charged Knox with investigating this extremely broad question over the summer — she held four open meetings and circulated a survey to anyone in OUSD with an opinion (good lord). 

I attended one of these meetings — held in the OUSD Board Room during the height of the July heat wave. Myself, City Council wildcard Leslie Rule, and a handful of other locals engaged with Knox back and forth, shared ideas, and asked questions. My experience as a local journalist in Ojai has taught me that any public brainstorming session will yield at least one wildly creative (albeit a bit unrealistic) proposal. One gentleman suggested that Taiwanese and Korean parents may be interested in sending their “artistically inclined teens” to an OUSD international school “far from the impending dangers of Chinese invasion and North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles.” Two other survey respondents suggested that extra OUSD space could be used for pickleball purposes.

Knox returned to the Board in August with her findings. In summary, the community is open to using OUSD property to generate revenue (by way of leasing or selling), averse to a hotel, and open to workforce housing. Trustee Phil Moncharsch immediately voiced his support for an OUSD workforce housing development sited on a portion of their 414 East Ojai Avenue property. He disclosed that he had reached out informally to potential developers — though he declined to provide more specifics when I inquired in late August. Moncharsch stated that it “would be way too premature to do so.” 

Critical to this workforce housing conversation is the new California law AB 2295. The new law, according to EdSource, “will allow staff housing to be built on any property owned by a school district without requiring the district to request zoning changes from city or county officials.” (!!!) The law will be in effect from 2024-2033. Celebrating the bill’s passage in 2022, California School Board Association Spokesman Troy Flint said, “Under existing law, development of surplus school property into education workforce housing can often take seven years or more to complete. By removing administrative barriers while still allowing for a robust community engagement process, AB 2295 would shorten that timeline.” According to a recent CityLAB report, collectively, “California schools own 7,068 properties and 75,000 plots of land of at least one acre or more that are suitable for development — and 61% of these properties are located where entry-level teachers and many classified employees face severe housing affordability challenges.” We’ll all have the opportunity to learn more about the new law during the September 13th School Board meeting, when the Board hears a presentation from Dr. Dana Cuff, the Director of CityLAB.

My immediate thought is this may well be the source of a fresh power struggle between OUSD and the City of Ojai.⁸ And as I reported in Part II of this series, OUSD has attempted to develop (and monetize) its 414 East Ojai Avenue property before. OUSD Trustee Atticus Reyes referred to this recent chapter in OUSD history as “the hotel debacle” — a nice little summation.

Now, it’s important to note that even with AB 2295, any development on a vacant school property would take years to implement due to state law. However, OUSD can and does enter into short-term licensing agreements with outside entities to allow the use of school property for a limited period of time and a fee — think of the American Youth Soccer Organization’s (AYSO) use of a school soccer field or Rock Tree Sky’s use of the Summit campus. Knox reported that she’s received interest in classroom rentals from a few local educational programs. She added that she’s particularly eager to enter into short-term licensing agreement(s) — meaning less than one year — for the San Antonio campus “so that we can have extra eyes on the campus.” Leaving school properties vacant for a significant period of time, she explained, can lead to problems like graffiti and trespassing. 

But affordable housing is far from the only concept for OUSD’s vacant and underutilized properties. Chet Hilgers, who worked with his family to initiate Ojai’s Skate Park project back in the ’90s — proposed a community-funded public pool on the 414 East Ojai Avenue property. Local architect Marc Whitman and Michael Addison of the Ojai Performing Arts Theater proposed the creation of an “Ojai Arts Academy” on the Matilija campus. Chris Danch of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council shared a concept for utilizing vacant property to create a Community Resilience Center — a space that would provide shelter and resources during a natural disaster. Newly appointed Trustee Blair Braney said she could see San Antonio utilized as an event space that brings in revenue for the district. “I’d love to see weddings at San Antonio every weekend, with discounts for OUSD alums,” she said before adding with a laugh, “Okay, maybe not every single weekend.”

At this point, it’s all ideas. As Reyes said, “This is the very beginning of a multi-year process.” My only hope is that something comes of the process — aside from legal fees, 7/11 committee reports, and community fights — this time around.

⁸ Another reason this name change is funny: now the Board is talking about booting Legacy High over to Matilija. ⁸ Specifically, this looks like the setup for another round of Ojai’s Historic Preservation Commission and the City Council vs. OUSD. We have seen this before.

BIG CHANGES AFOOT AT OUSD’S LITTLEST CAMPUS

OUSD’s headline change this year is obviously taking place on the Nordhoff campus. And we’ll get to that next. But first, I want to discuss changes afoot on Ojai’s littlest campus: Summit School. 

Summit played host to its own OUSD existential drama back in 2018 when the Board voted to close the school after only 21 elementary students enrolled. It was a particularly heart-wrenching decision at the time because some of the loss of enrollment resulted from the Thomas Fire’s devastation of the Upper Ojai Valley. For a period, the property sat vacant. Today it is flourishing. Get ready for Summit’s enrollment number this year…it’s 175. That’s nearly 10% of OUSD’s student body

The story of Summit’s renaissance begins with Rock Tree Sky (RTS) — an experiential enrichment center founded by former OUSD science teacher Jim Bailey and partner Natasha Efross in 2016. Initially housed in a maker space behind the Stagecoach Market, RTS began renting vacant OUSD classrooms on the Summit property after enrollment was suspended. 

The RTS program — which now serves children from grades TK-12 — initially attracted families outside of OUSD, generally home school families and students in area independent study programs, Bailey said. As enrollment grew at RTS, former Superintendent Morse took notice and floated an idea by Bailey: Did he think RTS families would be interested in enrolling in an OUSD independent study program housed on the Summit campus? Bailey responded emphatically: Yes. The partnership has yielded a program in which families can easily access OUSD teachers and have flexibility in their child’s education. 

“A growing number of families want a little more flexibility in how their young people learn,” he added. Knox echoed Bailey’s comments. “We are seeing a shift in what families want. They're wanting more fluidity,” she said. 

Now that’s interesting.

⁹ This year, OUSD students represent 175 of just over 200 RTS students.

WELCOME TO NORDHOFF JUNIOR HIGH AND HIGH SCHOOL

So, how’s school going at Ojai’s new junior-senior high school? Everyone I’ve consulted says some version of “there’s a lot of energy on campus.” Excitement is in the air — apparently. My 14-year-old neighbor reported, “It’s not that different. I barely see the seventh graders,” briefly looking up from her phone. Knox, for her part, acknowledged that OUSD must do a “smashup job” in this first year. Then, she said, the district’s next challenge will be communicating its success (and stability) to the community.

At this point, I’ve heard a lot about how parents and teachers feel about the school reorganization. Student opinions have been more difficult to come by. So, in search of student voices, I put together a short student survey during the summer months.

My near-twenty respondents (7th -12th graders) represent fewer than 2% of the Nordhoff population. These responses provide insight, but it’s certainly anecdotal. And the bottom line I found is this: the students (ahead of the school year at least) are skeptical. They clearly understood the rationale behind the school reorganization, but the majority (60%) did not feel that the plan communicated clearly to students. My personal favorite response came from an OUSD sophomore. Asked for his thoughts on junior-senior high, this particular 16 year-old boy responded, “i think itll suck.” 

When we talk about “how it’s going” at Nordhoff, I think the question we’re really asking is, “Have there been any incidents?” For me, the question I’m very curious about is how we, the community, will respond to said incident. How will we respond to OUSD’s next error — fiscal or otherwise? And who will we blame?

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

I embarked on this writing project in late January. And here I am, still writing it. Once I began, I couldn't stop. Because I think this story says so much about our community, our country, and our democracy. It showcases the anger, distrust, and straight-up misinformation and misogyny in our public debate. It displays the faltering of our public safety net — and how our school employees are left holding the pieces. It reveals an ongoing decentralization in our public education system and underscores ongoing battles about public space and affordable housing all across California.

If there’s one thing to remember (in my opinion) about Ojai’s public school district, it is this: every child living in the Ojai Valley — from Upper Ojai to Oak View — is an OUSD student, regardless of where they go to school. Did you know that OUSD has a responsibility to provide special education services to any child within its boundaries — again — regardless of where they go to school? That’s the promise of public education — that’s the promise of democracy.

And just like our democracy, our public school system is under threat. As society becomes more polarized, less trusting of public institutions, more unequal, more privatized — our system of public education is eroded. Debates over “critical race theory,” mask mandates, and transgender children’s rights are all manifestations of a long-time assault on our public school system. 

I remember sitting at Lisa’s Cantina one evening earlier this year; the woman next to me at the bar asked about my reporting project. Sipping a margarita, I shared with her the basics of the financial crisis, and she asked, “What now? Throw them all out?” The “them” being the entire Board. That sort of punitiveness surprises me — especially at the local level — because it’s hard to get qualified people in these (volunteer) jobs in the first place. That’s the other reason I was compelled to investigate this saga because — quite plainly — it was ugly. It was punitive. And at many times, it hurt to watch. 

After former Trustees Dr. Rebecca Chandler and Shelly Griffen resigned their positions on the Board in late March, I was desperate to speak with them. What drove these two women, who both earned advanced degrees in education during their service on the Board, to resign?

I found that their stories were painfully similar. I learned that both women lost friends, lost sleep, and suffered at work due to their service on the Board. Both women suffered pain as a result of extreme stress. Both women were on the receiving end of insults about their physical appearances — in person and over email. Both women told me that after this experience, they do not intend to run for public office ever again. That is tragic. And that deserves to be remembered. 

And in their place, we have two (by all accounts phenomenal) new trustees. We have a new superintendent with a deep history in the district who is trusted by OUSD staff. But I can’t help but wonder what happens when they face a crisis of their own — the aforementioned incident. Will we punish and throw them away as we did their predecessors? 

There’s one final factor of this particular crisis I want to call attention to: we all saw it coming. OUSD’s calamity reminds us that political action often occurs at crisis points— it’s generally the only time there’s sufficient political momentum to enact change. The question I want to leave you with is a difficult one: What other slow-moving municipal crises are we ignoring? In which ways is our community unsustainable? Climate change, water scarcity, wildfire danger, income inequality, an economy overleveraged in the tourism sector, and a desperate lack of affordable housing: these are the slow-moving challenges that, if left unaddressed, lead to catastrophe.