May 3, 2026

The school-funding formula that floors RVSD by design

The Local Control Funding Formula — LCFF — is how California decides what every public school district gets in state aid. It was enacted under Governor Brown in 2013, fully phased in by 2019, and replaced a previous patchwork of revenue limits and categorical funding programs.

If you want to understand why Ross Valley sits in the bottom 4% of California districts on per-pupil state funding^[1] despite being inside one of the wealthiest counties in America, you have to understand LCFF.

How the formula works

LCFF has three layers. Each one moves money in a specific direction.

Base grant

Every district receives a base grant per Average Daily Attendance (ADA), varying by grade span. ADA is the average number of students physically present each day — not enrollment. A student who’s home with a cold for a week reduces ADA without reducing enrollment.

The funding mechanism for LCFF districts is technically the higher of current-year P-2 ADA, prior-year P-2 ADA, or the average of the prior three years’ P-2 ADA — a “hold harmless” provision for declining-enrollment districts.

For 2024-25, the LCFF base grant is roughly $11,400 per ADA at the K-3 level, scaling up to about $13,200 for grades 9-12. RVSD’s K-8 mix puts the average around $11,800.^[1]

Supplemental grant

For each student in the unduplicated count — English learners, low-income (free or reduced-price meal eligible), and foster youth — districts receive an additional 20% of the base grant. This is the formula’s first equity lever.

Concentration grant

For districts where the unduplicated count exceeds 55% of total enrollment, an additional 65% of base grant is added per high-need student above the threshold. This is the formula’s second equity lever, and it’s the largest single source of variation in per-pupil state funding across California.

The intent is good — and it’s the wrong fit for Ross Valley

The intent behind LCFF is straightforward and largely good policy: districts serving the highest-need student populations should get the most state money. A district where 80% of students are low-income or English learners faces real costs that a district with 5% high-need students doesn’t.

But there’s a corollary: districts at the low end of high-need student counts get only the base grant. They don’t unlock the supplemental or concentration tiers. By design.

RVSD’s unduplicated count is around 2.46% of enrollment — roughly $455,574 in minimum proportionality calculation for 2023-24 per the district’s adopted budget.^[2] That’s well below the 55% concentration threshold, and it generates only modest supplemental funding. RVSD is, in effect, at the LCFF base-grant floor.

That’s the structural reason behind the 959 out of 995 California school districts ranking. The metric being measured is the LCFF base grant. RVSD’s demographics put it at the bottom 4% of the formula by design.^[1]

Why ADA also bites

The base grant is paid per ADA, not per enrolled student. RVSD historically had 95–96% ADA-to-enrollment ratios. Then COVID happened.

In 2022-23, RVSD’s ADA-to-enrollment ratio dropped to 92.3%. In 2023-24, it recovered partway to 94.2%.^[2]

That sounds small. It’s not. The hold-harmless provision uses the higher of current-year or prior-year ADA, but a multi-year decline still reduces revenue: with roughly 1,700 enrolled students and an ADA-to-enrollment ratio that’s three to four points below the historic norm, that’s 50–70 fewer ADA being funded at roughly $11,800 each — somewhere between $590,000 and $830,000 in lost annual base-grant revenue, none of which the district controls.

This is the part of LCFF that’s hardest to defend on policy grounds: the formula penalizes the district financially when students get sick, when families take long vacations, when transportation breaks down. Sacramento is moving (slowly) toward enrollment-based funding for some categories, but the base grant is still ADA-based.

Why the formula won’t change for RVSD

It would take a state-level reform to unfloor districts like RVSD. There are good arguments for one — the LCFF/Prop 13 architecture has pushed wealthy-county / low-need districts into a structural squeeze that wasn’t intended — but it isn’t on anyone’s policy agenda. A reform that captured RVSD’s situation would have implications for hundreds of other districts and tens of millions of dollars in state spending shifts. There’s no constituency in Sacramento agitating for it.

That leaves the parcel tax as the only lever Ross Valley voters can pull. Sixteen of Marin’s seventeen school districts use one.^[3] They use them because LCFF doesn’t fund Marin districts adequately, and Prop 13 limits the local property-tax growth that would otherwise compensate.

What the formula tells you about your Measure H vote

The 959/995 LCFF ranking isn’t a complaint. It’s a description of how Sacramento decided to allocate its money. RVSD isn’t underfunded by accident — it’s underfunded by design, because its students don’t trigger the formula’s equity tiers.

That design isn’t going to change. The state isn’t sending RVSD more money. The math means: either Ross Valley voters supplement that floor through Measure H, or RVSD operates on a base-grant budget that even the district’s own staff describe as the bare minimum.^[4]

Measure H is the lever. The formula isn’t.

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

Sources

← All posts