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Schools aren’t “underfunded“, districts are “underspending“, and voters need to stop with the Bad Parenting.
Every good parent knows that you don’t reward bad behavior; you only reward good behavior. And yet, as voters, they constantly reinforce bad behavior?
Even after a narrow defeat, mismanaged districts still feel encouraged to try this again. There is always the chance that by paying another consultant to come up with slightly different misleading ballot language, more voters might lean towards a “yes” next time around.
“What gets rewarded, gets repeated. What gets punished, gets avoided.”
[James Clear, author of Atomic Habits]
Education has little to do with Funding
It’s well known since the 1966 James Coleman Report that good education does not require a lot of funds … as long as most of the funding goes to the classroom and only the classroom.
In 2022, the OECD average funding was $15,023 per pupil. Education powerhouses like Finland ($15,000), Japan ($14,130), or Estonia ($12,362) are well below that average.
The Local Control Funding Formula ensures that every single child in California receives at least $12,000 to $15,000. In fact, adding in all local, state, and federal funding, California is funding its students with an amazing – and basically OECD-leading – $24k–$27k (p17) in average per-pupil funding.
And yes, depending on methodology, you see numbers ranging from $20k to $28k in California. And yes, while working with “cross-country comparisons” and “averages” may be imperfect and even unfair, these are the best big-picture systems available right now. Since many National and International Policies are based on these comparisons and averages, we can confidently use those numbers.
California is a very diverse, very large, and very expensive state, and yet, we have only one funding system, named the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). And no matter what you hear, it is doing an excellent job.
“The LCFF system is widely recognized as rational, explainable, and, well, good policy.” [ED100.org]
Only superintendents and school board trustees seem to disagree. But these are also the people who seem to disagree with James Coleman and Martin Luther King Jr. I lost my trust in them a long time ago, and if you paid attention, you would too.
Quick Recap
LCFF is intended to ensure that no student in California is underfunded by the state anymore. The annual per-pupil funding compares favorably with other OECD countries. Unfortunately, the state left a huge loophole called Local Control. They gave power to local politicians – with little knowledge but feeling highly entitled – to distribute LCFF funding the way they want. And looking at our numbers, these school board trustees don’t seem to value teachers or education very highly.
“People always trust someone who calls himself ‘Trustee’.” [Con Man’s Bible Page 28]
The initial preamble of this post was that it does not matter how much revenue any CA school district receives, spending on teacher salaries hardly ever reaches those $6,500.
We looked at four different ways and came to four slightly different results:
- Way 1 led to $6,050 (just salary)
- Way 2 led to $4,521 (just salary)
- Way 3 led to $6,500 (salary and benefits)
- Way 4 led to $6,600 (salary and benefits)
From these four different ways of looking at the widely available CA data, we concluded that even extremely rich districts like Palo Alto USD or Redwood City SD ($30,000-$40,000 per-student funding) will only spend around $6,500 per student (teacher salary + benefits) on the most important person in education.
And yes, the term “basic aid district” is meant to sound like they are one bake sale away from insolvency, even though they have bigger budgets than Island States like Tuvalu or Palau.
Where did the $6,500 figure come from?
Just for the record, we are always focusing here on the most important person in education – the certificated classroom teacher; we are talking certificated classroom teacher compensation.
“Nothing impacts student achievement more than the quality of a teacher we can put in the front of their classroom.” [RCSD Trustee and Board President David Weekly]
David Weekly is absolutely correct. We both don’t want to hear about “non-certificated aides”, or “specialists”, or “teacher coaches”, or non-certificated substitute teachers. If a district has many of these, that is already a solid sign of mismanagement … only the quality of real classroom teachers counts.
Initially, I thought teachers received ca. $6,500 of the per-student funding in salaries, but we found they receive closer to $4,500 in salaries, and the $6,500 includes benefits. That number came from Ed-Data.org. For their 2024/25 year, the Object Code 1100 shows that only $31M/$106M (~29%) is spent on teacher salaries. That number should be at least $42M (=40%). Apparently, no one has read or enforced California’s Education Code (EDC §41372) in the last 20 years.
Under Object Code 1100, there is also a section named “Dollars/Student (ADA)”, which says $6,394. That is the number my $6,500 was based on, and which might be wrong one way or another. I guess we are not done just yet. There is still room for more research into the famous $6,500 number.
Way 5: Looking at the Macro Numbers
According to California and Ed-Data.org, we can look at the state’s total numbers.
CA Data Variables 2024/25:
- Total Expenditures: ~$106B
- Object 1100 (Teacher Salaries): $30,938,093,332 = ~$31B
- Certificated Teachers: 286,126 FTE = ~286K
- Students: 5,806,221 = ~5.8M
Step-by-Step Math:
X = 30,938,093,332 / 286,126 = $108,128 average teacher salary
X = $30,938,093,332 / 5,806,221 = $5,328 going to teacher salaries
X = 108,128 / 5,328 = ~20 students per classroom
In Plain English:
An average of 20 students per classroom isn’t “education”; it’s called “schooling”; it shows us California has given up on “education”. The greatest educational benefits can be seen in classrooms of 12-18; the fact that CA lawmakers haven’t made this size mandatory is their greatest educational crime and explains a lot. They clearly have that funding.
We can see that local politicians, superintendents, and “trustees” have completely made up these stories about “underfunding” education and “underserved” schools.
Looking at the very public and widely available ED-Data.org numbers, California School Districts can spend a combined $106B, or $22,300 per student, but only $6,500 goes to quality education. That number is $12B short of what it should be. That is not an accident. That has been done very deliberately by politicians favoring CCSESA, ACSA, CSBA, and CASBO over students and teachers.
(Everyone in Education should know these organizations; if you are looking for villains, I would start there.)
Way 6: The Research Data
All this isn’t exactly Breaking News. Sacramento knows these numbers very well; in fact, State Superintendent of Public Instruction – and definitely not your next Governor – Tony Thurmond is the one collecting those numbers and making reports. We have assumed this system is working exactly the way CA Senators want this to work.
In 2006, Stanford University researchers Susanna Loeb, Jason Grissom, and Katharina Strunk were painting a Picture of Revenues and Expenditures in California’s School Districts.
The report provided a detailed insight into funding and spending in California back in the early 2000s.
Stanford Data Variables of 2005:
- CA average per-student funding (general fund) =~ $7,127
- CA general K-12 teacher salaries per student = ~$3,113
- CA general K-12 teacher salaries and benefits per student = ~$4,450
Step-by-Step Math:
X = Ratio salary / funding = 3,113 / 7,127 = 43.7%
X = ratio full load cost / funding = 4,450 / 7,127 = 62.4%
In Plain English:
Some 20 years ago, the teacher compensation amounted to $3,113 per student or 43% of the per-student funding. Including the benefits raised the classroom teacher spending as part of the General Fund to over 62%. This was still in accordance with EDC §41372.
Since then, CA Democrats must have stopped enforcing California’s Education Code, and districts were allowed to run wild with their administration budgets.
Way 7: Translating 2005 to 2025
Stanford 2006:
- Total expenditures per pupil = $8,302
- Ratio teacher salary / funding = ~44%
- Ratio teacher (salary + benefits) = ~62%
Ed.data.org 2025
- Total expenditures per pupil = $22,300
- Ratio teacher salary / funding = ~29%
- Ratio teacher (salary + benefits) = ~42%
In plain English:
In 2006, 62% of the Total Budget went to what we would call quality education, and only 38% was “administration“, “discretionary spending“, or “discretionary spending on administration“. By 2025, these two numbers basically switched places. School Districts spend only 40% of their funding on “education”, and they give themselves the discretion to spend the other 60% on things that are more to their personal liking, like “energy healers“, stays at luxury hotels, and eating out at Michelin-starred restaurants. [support your local news]
Post.Scriptum.
CA Dept of Education, the County Office of Education, and 23 Superintendents in the county know all these numbers very well. They don’t see the need to change when voters keep rewarding such mismanagement of educational funding. Every time a voter said “YES” to a bond or ballot measure because “it’s for the children“, these Trustees in the richest school districts on planet Earth made sure that money moved from educators to administrators.
“Don’t reward behavior you don’t want to see repeated.“ [James Clear]
What these voters really did was Positive Reinforcement of Negative Behavior. And every real educator and psychologist will tell you that this is some Bad Parenting right there. 15,654 district voters made the wrong choice.
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 the Trustees wanted to give more money to teachers, no outside force would prevent them from doing so.
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.
