May 2, 2026

Why RVSD flips between two state-funding regimes — and loses both ways

In our companion post on California school funding, we sketched the three pieces of state policy that make Ross Valley structurally underfunded. This one zooms in on the most unusual piece: RVSD’s year-to-year flip between LCFF (state-aid) and basic-aid (community-funded) status. It is the single most important — and least understood — fact about how RVSD is funded.

The two normal regimes

Every California school district is funded one of two ways:

LCFF / state-aid districts receive what the Local Control Funding Formula calculates — base grants per Average Daily Attendance, plus supplemental and concentration grants for English learners, low-income, and foster students. Local property tax is collected and remitted up to the LCFF target; anything above the target is captured by the state. Most California districts work this way.
Basic-aid / community-funded districts have local property tax revenue that exceeds their LCFF target. They keep the excess, receive only minimal state aid, and benefit directly from local property-tax growth. In Marin, Bolinas-Stinson, Kentfield, Larkspur-Corte Madera, Mill Valley, Reed Union, Ross, Sausalito Marin City, and Tamalpais Union are all basic-aid.^[1]

Most districts stay in one regime indefinitely. Mill Valley has been basic-aid for a long time. Novato Unified has been LCFF for a long time. RVSD is one of the few districts in the state that flips between the two every other year.

What the district says about its own funding

Per the RVSD Financial Information page:

“The Ross Valley School District is in a very unique position where we flip between LCFF (State Aid) and Basic Aid (Community Funded) every other year. This essentially means we receive the bare minimum level of funding to run our schools.”^[2]

The district’s First Interim 2024-25 budget makes the recent oscillation pattern explicit:^[2]

2024-25: Community Funded (basic-aid) — higher property tax revenues
2025-26: State Aid (LCFF) — exclusion of supplemental property taxes, plus required in-lieu transfers to Ross Valley Charter School
2026-27: Community Funded again — projected higher property tax revenues

Why this is the worst of both worlds

Either regime alone has upside. RVSD captures neither.

LCFF upside RVSD doesn’t get: the supplemental and concentration grants for high-need students. RVSD’s high-need student count is around 2.46% — well below the 55% threshold for concentration funding.^[2] So in years RVSD is LCFF-funded, it gets just the base grant. That’s the bottom-4%-statewide ranking.^[3]

Basic-aid upside RVSD doesn’t get: the local property tax growth that funds Mill Valley, Kentfield, and Reed Union. In years RVSD is basic-aid, supplemental property taxes are still excluded from the calculation, and the in-lieu transfer obligation to Ross Valley Charter School (~$468,000/year) is a direct hit on local revenue.^[4]

So in basic-aid years, RVSD is at the floor of basic-aid; in LCFF years, RVSD is at the floor of LCFF. The flip happens not because RVSD is gaming the system — it happens because the property-tax base is right at the threshold, and small variations in supplemental taxes and in-lieu obligations push it back and forth.

The federal NCES data shows the fingerprint clearly. RVSD’s revenue mix is 63% local / 35% state / 2% federal — splitting the difference between a basic-aid district (typically 80–90% local) and an LCFF district (typically 50/50). No other Marin K-8 district has that mix.^[5]

What this means for the Measure H budget

The oscillation is why the parcel tax matters more for RVSD than for almost any other Marin district.

For Mill Valley, Kentfield, or Reed Union, the parcel tax is a supplement on top of stable basic-aid revenue that grows with the property-tax base. For RVSD, the parcel tax is the stabilizer — it’s what keeps the budget from swinging hard between basic-aid and LCFF years. Without it, the district would be at the floor of either regime, with no buffer for the transitions.

That’s why the parcel tax supplies a relatively high share of RVSD’s budget: 15.6% in 2024-25, 16.2% in 2025-26, against a more typical 10–12% share in basic-aid districts.^[6] It’s not because RVSD is profligate. It’s because the structural revenue base is small enough that the local supplement has to do more work.

Why Measure H is the only lever

Sacramento isn’t going to fix the LCFF / basic-aid threshold problem for one Marin district. The legislature isn’t structured to make per-district adjustments, and a wholesale LCFF reform that captured RVSD’s situation would have implications for hundreds of other districts that aren’t on anyone’s policy agenda.

Property values aren’t going to grow fast enough to lock RVSD permanently into basic-aid status, either. Fairfax and San Anselmo housing turns over slowly enough that the assessed-value base grows at single-digit-percent rates — far below the LCFF target growth that would matter for the threshold question.^[2]

That leaves the parcel tax as the only lever voters can actually pull. It’s the only piece of RVSD’s revenue base that the community fully controls — not Sacramento, not the property-tax cycle, not enrollment trends. Every two years, voters can decide whether to keep doing it.

Measure H asks voters to keep doing it for another ten years. It’s the only realistic way to keep RVSD off the floor of either funding regime.

That’s why we recommend a Yes vote on Measure H.

Sources

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