Districts spend only $6,500 on teacher salaries; that’s it.
In California, where total per-pupil funding ranges from $24,764 to $27,418 depending on the district’s demographic makeup, the public often assumes a large share goes straight to the front-of-classroom leader. However, tracking expenditures through the California Department of Education (CDE) Object Codes and standard staffing models reveals that the base salary of a standard classroom teacher consistently resolves to roughly $6,500 per student.
California’s Local Control Funding Formula ensures that absolutely no child in California is underfunded anymore; they probably never were. Whenever you hear about schools in California that are “underserved“, the blame goes to your County Board of Education and your school district.
Before we draw any conclusions, let’s nail down those $6,500. How sure can we be about that number?
Way 1: Total Budget Share
Under the California School Accounting Manual (CSAM), all expenditures are categorized into standardized Object Codes. Object 1100 tracks strictly “Teachers’ Salaries” (certificated classroom teachers). It excludes Object 2000 (Classified Salaries, such as janitors, bus drivers, and aides) and Object 3000 (Employee Benefits). CDE’s statewide “CalEdFacts” tracking data have historically shown that school districts allocate between 25% and 30% of their total general fund expenditures strictly to Object 1100.
CA Data Variables:
- Total California Per-Pupil Expenditure: $22,000 (conservative baseline)
- Statewide Average Allocation to Object 1100 (Teacher Salaries): 27.5% (derived from CDE Unified School District averages)
Step-by-Step Math:
X = Total Per-Pupil Spend x Object 1100 Percentage
X = $22,000 x 0.275 = $6,050
In plain English:
The headline uses $6,500; this calculation, using the CA macro averages, would get us into that neighborhood.
Way 2: Roster Load Math
This time, we are taking a teacher’s actual contractual base salary and spreading it evenly across the actual human beings assigned to their roster. According to data from the CDE and the National Education Association (NEA), California’s average public school teacher salary has climbed to roughly $103,552. While the statutory student-to-certified-staff ratio may look lower on paper because it includes counselors, librarians, and specialists, the physical student-to-classroom-teacher ratio in typical California classrooms hovers around 23 to 26 students.
(Class size is more common for elementary schools; roster load makes more sense in middle and high school settings. Here we use them somewhat interchangeably.)
CA Data Variables:
- Average CA Public School Teacher Base Salary: $103,552 (NEA/CDE Data)
- Average Real Classroom Student Roster Load: 23 students per teacher
Step-by-Step Math:
X = Average Teacher Salary / Average Student Roster Load
X = $104,000 / 23 = $4,521
Some districts are replacing real classroom teachers with a combination of teachers + classroom aides. In this scenario, average classroom spending might increase, but the roster load will as well.
X = $140,000 / 32 = $4,375 per student
In plain English:
This time, our result of $4,500 per student is missing the $6,500 number entirely. Even adding classroom aides doesn’t help, as roster loads would certainly go up. In fact, classroom aides are meant to lower the per-student spending, not increase it. If districts wanted to push the $4,500 towards $6,500, they would have to hire more teachers and still provide steep salary increases.
Way 3: What about the Benefits?
This calculation compares “District Cost” and “Employee Base Pay.” In California, a teacher’s salary is only part of what the district spends to employ them. When adding benefits such as mandatory health, welfare, dental, Social Security/Medicare adjustments, and workers’ compensation, a district’s “fully loaded” cost for a teacher is frequently 40% to 50% higher than the teacher’s actual gross base salary.
Or, turning the formula around, if we have the fully loaded cost of a teacher, we can assume 66% of that number goes to salary, ca 33% is benefits.
CA Data Variables:
- Fully Loaded Cost of a California Teacher (Salary + Benefits): $150,000
- Average Student Load Per Teacher Equivalent: 25 students
Step-by-Step Math:
X = Average Fully Loaded Cost / Average Student Load
X = $150,000 / 25 = $6,000
X = $150,000 / 23 = $6,500
In plain English:
We finally got the $6,500 we were hoping for, but only if we cheat a little with the classroom size.
But using those $6,500, we end up with ca. $2,200 in benefits, and only ~$4,400 per student would be considered teacher salary. Somehow, that is still not the $6,500 salary I promised and a far cry from the average funding of $25,000.
Let’s try one more way.
Way 4: California requires only $4,400
The LCFF Base Grant Rates per Average Daily Attendance are published annually by the California Department of Education (CDE).
CA Data Variables:
- CDE’s statutory base grants per student ranged between $10,000 and $12,460
- CDE §41372 requires close to 60% of that funding to go towards the classroom.
- The Instructional Share: Statewide accounting averages indicate that districts generally allocate approximately 60% to 65% of their flexible LCFF base funds to the classroom.
Step-by-Step Math:
X = Base Grant x Instructional Share
X = $11,000 x 60% = $6,600
In plain English:
Those $6,600 would cover salaries and benefits, meaning only $4,400 would cover the salaries.
I was Wrong!
In my initial premise, I noted that CA districts have an average of $25,000 per student in funding. Outstanding!
And yet, they only spend $6,500 of that funding on teacher salaries. Abysmal!
Turns out I might have been a little off.
We tried four different ways of using four different sets of California’s education averages, and each time we had trouble getting teacher salaries into the $6,500-per-student ballpark. It seems like we need benefits to get even close.
Turns out California only requires $6,500 per student for all classroom spending, meaning salaries and benefits. So most district superintendents in this state seem to say, ‘Why would we spend more?‘
The Rest is just “Discretionary Spending”
We keep coming back to the $6,500, but it’s again not just the teacher salaries as I suggested; $6,500 per student pays for teacher salaries, including all benefits.
I tried to push that number up, but it wasn’t possible:
The dramatic gap between a headline figure of $25,000+ per-student funding and the real-world calculation of ~$6,500 per student classroom spending boils down to systemic administrative overhead and plain old mismanagement. We have no other explanation.
Let’s add one more formula for “Discretionary Spending” to narrow down the level of mismanagement.
CA Data Variables:
- CA average per-student funding: $25,000
- CA average per-student mandatory spending: $6,500
Step-By-Step Math:
“Discretionary Spending” = (per-student funding) – (mandatory per-student spending)
X = $25,000 – $6,500 = $18,500 per student
$18,500 per student – after the most important person is already paid – is an enormous number. And while not all is really “discretionary” per se, the superintendent and his board have all the leeway in the world to decide how much money goes to the superintendent, how many “directors” he hires, how many principals and vice principals, how large his district office is, how many consultants they pay, how big the real estate business is, and, of course, how many gimmick schools they run and how much is ‘self-pleasuring‘. They even decide how many zero-emission school buses a district needs that has given up on transportation a long, long time ago.
Conclusion
This wasn’t all clean data. It’s almost impossible to get solid data from the same year for all the different sources. And yet, somehow, we always end up with $4,000 on the low end and $6,500 on the high end. But always far away from the $24-$27k of available funding per student. What all these formulas show is that it is not Sacramento that is stiffing our children or teachers. It’s your superintendent and your Board of Trustees. The problem always seems to Local Control.
LCFF takes care of all basics and then doubles the numbers to be on the safe side. “Basic aid” catapults a district into another dimension. This means most Bay Area districts now have at least $5,000 to $10,000 per-student in “discretionary spending”. Basic Aid districts like Redwood City SD, Palo Alto USD, or Ravenswood SD now have $20,000, even $30,000 per student in “discretionary spending”.
No one is checking what they do with that money. They can choose to do “good” or “bad”.
Any school district complaining these days about being “underfunded” or “underserved” is gaslighting. The funding is absolutely fine; spending focus, however, needs adjusting.
We all know where the money goes in “choice school” districts. We all know this board loves its gimmick schools. Trustees built and kept them to segregate their own children there. Legally, that is at their discretion, but morally and financially …
School Segregation just happens to be a very expensive decision.
And since no change is coming, we will keep talking about that when the next budget crisis hits. And it will.
Who is fully in charge of ‘discretionary spending’ within RCSD:
John Baker and his Board, including Jennifer Ng Kwing King, David Li, Christian Rubalcaba, Cecilia I. Márquez, Mike Wells, and David Weekly.
If Trustees wanted to give more money to teachers, they had many years to do so.
What we can learn from Palo Alto USD
Palo Alto USD just got their Measure B parcel tax defeated at the polls; as our calculations showed, they never needed it anyway to do good by their teachers. PAUSD has plenty of leeway to give its teachers several raises. And they got that because PAUSD knows the numbers, their union rep. knows these numbers; maybe even their teachers do. RCSD’s Board of Trustees knows these numbers as well and has the same leeway. They have enough “discretionary spending” to do right by teachers; That is not on Sacramento, that is on Superintendent John Baker. It is also on the Board of Trustees; it’s on Stanford and the Redwood City Education Foundation (RCEF); it’s also on gullible teacher union reps that don’t seem to own calculators or a web browser.
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
Blog: CA only requires $6,500 for Teachers. There Was Never More Money Coming.June 11, 2026 10:57 am
