If you’ve ever wondered how a school district in Marin County — median household income $148,000, median home price north of $1.5 million — can rank in the bottom 4% of California districts on per-pupil state funding,^[1] the short answer is: three pieces of California policy stack on top of each other in a way that almost nobody notices until they vote on something like Measure H.

This post is the boring-but-load-bearing one in the series. If you read it, the rest of the Measure H argument makes more sense.

Piece 1: The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)

LCFF, enacted under Governor Brown in 2013 and fully phased in by 2019, is how California allocates state aid to school districts. It works in three layers.

Base grants are paid per Average Daily Attendance (ADA) and vary by grade span. ADA is the average number of students physically present each day; it’s not the same as enrollment, which is the headcount.

Supplemental grants add 20% of the base grant for each English learner, low-income, or foster-youth student.

Concentration grants add another 65% of base grant for districts where those high-need students exceed 55% of total enrollment. This tier is the largest single equity lever in the formula.

The intent is good: districts serving the most vulnerable students get the most state money. The consequence for a place like Ross Valley is that low-need districts get just the base grant. Fairfax and San Anselmo don’t have the demographics to unlock the supplemental and concentration tiers — RVSD’s high-need student count is around 2.46% of enrollment.^[2] The formula floors RVSD at the lowest tier of state funding by design.

That’s the “959 out of 995 California school districts” ranking the Yes campaign cites. It’s measured on the LCFF base grant, where RVSD genuinely is in the bottom 4%.^[1]

Piece 2: Proposition 13

Prop 13, passed in 1978, caps property tax at 1% of assessed value and limits annual assessment increases to 2% — except when a property changes hands, at which point it’s reassessed at market value.

This affects RVSD two ways at once.

It throttles the local property tax base. Fairfax and San Anselmo have low housing turnover. Long-time owners stay put — partly because moving forfeits their Prop 13 protection — so the property tax base grows slowly. Per the district: “we have had low housing turnover in Fairfax and San Anselmo with homes being owned for 30+ years or being passed down to family members.”^[2]

It also makes the workaround harder. Prop 13’s companion Proposition 218 (1996) requires two-thirds voter approval for special taxes, including parcel taxes. That’s the 66.67% threshold Measure H has to clear. It’s why a 60% Yes vote — which would pass virtually any other ballot measure — would still kill Measure H. The same constitutional architecture that limits property-tax growth also makes parcel taxes harder to raise.

Piece 3: Basic-aid status, and RVSD’s unique oscillation

This is the piece almost no campaign material explains, and it’s the most important.

California school districts are funded one of two ways:

• LCFF districts (sometimes “state-aid districts”) receive what the LCFF formula calculates. They don’t keep local property tax growth above their LCFF target — the state captures it. Most of California’s districts are funded this way.
• Basic-aid districts (sometimes “community-funded”) have local property tax revenue that exceeds their LCFF target, so they keep all the excess and receive only minimal state aid. In Marin, Bolinas-Stinson, Kentfield, Larkspur-Corte Madera, Mill Valley, Reed Union, Ross, and others are basic-aid. They’re 80–90% locally funded and capture every dollar of property-tax growth.^[3]

RVSD is structurally different from either:

“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.” — RVSD Financial Information page^[2]

The district’s First Interim 2024-25 report confirms the oscillation: 2024-25 funded as Community Funded (higher property taxes); 2025-26 as State Aid (because supplemental property taxes are excluded and the district pays in-lieu transfers to Ross Valley Charter School); 2026-27 projected back to Community Funded as property taxes rise.^[2]

This is the worst of both worlds. Not enough local property tax to lock in basic-aid upside; not enough demographics to unlock LCFF supplemental and concentration grants. The district sits at the floor of either system.

Why parcel taxes exist at all

The parcel tax is the workaround. Marin districts use them to compensate for what the LCFF/Prop 13 architecture leaves on the table.

Sixteen of Marin’s seventeen school districts levy parcel taxes today; only Laguna Joint Elementary doesn’t.^[4] They typically supply 15–25% of basic-aid district budgets and a higher share in LCFF districts like RVSD. RVSD’s current parcel tax supplies roughly 16% of the district budget — about $4.8M of a $30M general fund.^[5]

That number is the whole reason Measure H exists. The parcel tax is what carries RVSD between two state-funding regimes that neither fully fund it. Without it, the district has neither the local property-tax base of a basic-aid district nor the LCFF supplemental/concentration funding of a high-need district. It just has the floor.

The deeper irony

The Ross Valley voters who approved the original parcel tax in 1993, renewed it in 1997, 2005, 2012, and 2018, and are being asked to renew and increase it as Measure H, are now being asked to compensate for a property tax system that was sold to those same voters in 1978 as protection.^[4] Whether that’s a sustainable equilibrium for a small district inside a wealthy county is the actual question on the ballot.

Measure H doesn’t solve the underlying state architecture. Even if it passes, RVSD will need another parcel-tax escalation before 2036. But Measure H is what voters can control. The state architecture isn’t on the ballot. Five neighborhood schools are.

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

Sources

1. Marin IJ (Apr 14, 2026): “Ross Valley schools seek parcel tax renewal, increase” — proponent argument citing the 959/995 LCFF base-grant ranking.

2. RVSD: Financial Information — district’s own explanation of LCFF/basic-aid oscillation, low housing turnover, and the high-need student percentage.

3. National Center for Education Statistics

   School District Finance Survey (F-33)

   , FY 2021-22 — local-revenue percentages for each Marin district.

4. Marin County Office of Education: school-district parcel tax summary (Sept 2025) — confirms 16 of 17 Marin districts levy parcel taxes.

5. RVSD 2025-26 Adopted Budget (BoardDocs PDF) — total general-fund revenues of $29,774,385; parcel tax 16.2% of revenues in 2025-26.

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