"The trust in the community has been very damaged. "There are a lot of credibility issues that are having us question the validity of what is being told to us," said Richard Byrd, interim president of the Ojai Federation of Teachers. Talks with the Ojai Federation of Teachers officially hit an impasse on Oct. 26, district and union leaders confirmed. The crisis comes as contract negotiations with the district's classified union and teacher's union continue to be stalemate. "We have not made the structural cuts necessary to stabilize our finances because it's difficult," Morse said. "It will impact students and staff." The district planned to make over $3 million in cuts in May 2020, Morse said, but district leaders forestalled the cuts when legislators announced emergency COVID-19 funds. The superintendent said the emergency money did not solve the district's underlying budget problems. Ojai Superintendent Tiffany Morse said the district's enrollment woes have been amplified by an understaffed, fraud-marred financial department, budget coding errors affecting more than $700,000 of district money, inflation spikes and the district's slow adjustment to the new reality. The district has lost nearly half of its students since 2000 and more than a quarter between 20. The decline has steadily eaten into the amount of attendance-based state funding the district gets annually. Ojai Unified, like many districts around the county, has been unable to stem shrinking enrollment over the last decade. The meeting, less than a week after salary talks with the district's teacher union hit impasse, was called in the wake of a county-ordered visit from state fiscal crisis consultants and a report from the Ventura County Office of Education that highlighted a more than $1 million gap in the district's financial reports last year. Ojai Unified School District trustees met Tuesday night in a tense special session under mounting scrutiny of the district's topsy-turvy finances.
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