|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Why waste outstanding discretionary funding on students when voters keep rewarding school districts?
Measure C was never going to bring more money to teachers. Not in a district that is wasting more funding on debt interest payments than Finland spends on education.
What Happened So Far
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).
There are always more ways to slice a budget, so we added more research and calculations. This led to a few more insights:
- Way 5 led to $5,328 (just salary in 2024).
- Way 6 led to $3,113 (2005) or $5,300 (inflation-adjusted to 2025).
- Way 7 shows that education spending went from 62 percent in 2005 to 40 percent by 2025.
The last part is the most critical because it explains the contradictory reports we keep seeing. California is funding its school districts exceptionally well – almost double the OECD average. Schools and classrooms, however, feel underfunded and underserved because they really have been. The blame obviously falls on the proverbial middlemen: your superintendent, your local Board of Trustees, and the bloated district offices surrounding them.
I understand there might still be a few people who refuse to believe the calculations presented so far. And would these people believe if one of the top universities in the world and one of the highest-paying CA districts confirmed the data?
If not, cognitive scientist Keith Stanovich might have the answer.
“Dysrationalia is the inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence.” [Keith Stanovich, University of Toronto]
Way 8: Gown Versus Town
In 2019, Stanford University explored adding more on-campus housing. They negotiated a conditional General Use Permit (GUP) package with Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, and Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD). Stanford was supposed to provide community benefits, including payment to PAUSD for each new student enrolled by campus residents.
Stanford offered $5,800 per student. Local media immediately pointed out the massive gap, claiming that PAUSD was spending roughly $19,200 to $20,000 per student. To the public, it looked like Stanford was getting a 70% discount. Stanford’s accountants also used the exact formulas we looked at to prove that $5,800 was full mitigation of the marginal cost of one regular pupil.
Stanford’s army of lawyers and accountants argued that if 20 new students from university housing move into PAUSD, the district doesn’t need to build a new district office or hire a new superintendent. Those fixed overhead costs are already covered. Instead, the only new physical expense the district incurs when adding one pupil is one share of a classroom teacher’s base salary.
PAUSD Data Variables:
- Estimated 2019 PAUSD Teacher Base Salary: ~$116,000
- Average Class Size/Student Load = 20 students
Step-by-Step Math:
X = (Average teacher base salary) / (number of students)
X = $116,000 / 20 = $5,800
In Plain English:
Stanford used its own Loeb-Grissom-Strunk research data, shoved it in PAUSD’s face, and told them they shouldn’t be on the hook for oversized administration or other district gimmicks.
Basic Aid means Basic Care
Why did local media jump on the $20,000 per-student expenditure first, instead of asking why education isn’t actually free in a free public education system? Why wouldn’t PAUSD embrace more students?
What Stanford and PAUSD did here gives us an inside look into the cynical way Bay Area “Local Control” keeps messing up school funding. When a community has to essentially bribe a public school district to accept public school students, voters should be asking questions.
What community-funded and basic aid really means is that these districts can stop caring about community, because funding is more than enough. They are literally too overfunded to care anymore.
Earlier, we only looked at a formula that covers teacher salaries. If PAUSD had knowledgeable negotiators, they would probably want benefits covered as well. But Stanford could easily counter that it should pay only for what California’s Education Code requires.
PAUSD Data Variables:
- Estimated 2019 PAUSD classroom cost (salary and benefits): ~$174,000
- CA Maximum Class Sizes = ~30 students
Step-by-Step Math:
X = (Average teacher base salary) / (number of students)
X = $174,000 / 30 = $5,800
In Plain English:
Stanford and PAUSD are titans in their respective fields. If these two organizations agreed that $5,800 is the true cost to educate a pupil in one of the richest, highest-paying districts in the Bay Area, teachers and voters should pay close attention.
Conclusion
The Stanford versus PAUSD negotiations happened in 2019, and Stanford eventually withdrew its plans. But they are ready to renegotiate again. This time around, the number could realistically jump to $6,500 or even $7,000, since PAUSD really is one of the highest-paying districts for teachers.
So far, we have found 9 different ways to look at how much California values its educators. We uncovered salary numbers between $3,113 and $6,500.
“I can do this all day.” [Captain America]
We can do another 20 different ways, look at 1,000 California school districts, and we will find more proof that funding hardly matters. These districts receive $15,000, $20,000, $29,500 (RCSD), and even $40,000 (PAUSD) in per-pupil funding, but the spending ends up around the same $6,500; that’s it.
As has been known since 1966, if funding doesn’t reach classrooms, it has no positive influence on educational outcomes; it immediately becomes wasteful ‘discretionary spending‘.
Post.Scriptum.
If RCSD leaders wanted to pay their teachers better, they could have used their discretionary spending years ago to benefit educational outcomes. They could have done the right thing back in 1984 or 1995. But instead, they wasted their discretionary funding on “School Choice” or “School of Choice” – the favorite tool of Team Segregation.
Whatever Superintendent John Baker’s name is for his wasteful spending hobby, the technical and scientific name remains the same:
Gimmick Schools (schola discriminis or academia deridiculus).
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 Team Segregation wanted to give more money to teachers, no outside force could prevent them from doing so – and certainly not a failed Measure C.
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.
Redwood City float celebrates Italian American heritage in Fourth of July paradeJuly 1, 2026 11:02 am
