$130 School Parcel Tax To Be Voted on in May

    Orinda homeowners could pay an additional $130 a year if an Acalanes school district parcel tax is approved in a May 6 special election.
    The Acalanes Union High School District (AUHSD) board will ask local voters to approve an eight-year parcel tax, which is an annual levy on individual properties that is not based on property values.
    The special election, which was approved in a Jan. 27 board meeting, would cost $960,000 to $1.2 million+, according to Contra Costa County’s Candidate Services division. The cost for each voter in a mailed-ballot special election is between $11 and $14, and there are 87,350 registered voters in the district. (In-person elections are even more expensive, because they involve organizing and staffing physical polling places.)
    The alternative would be to wait for the June 2026 primary or the November 2026 general election, since at this point, no elections are scheduled in 2025.
    Though the district could have placed the tax on the 2024 November ballot at a lower cost, the board decided to wait.
    “We always want to be thoughtful and balance the needs of the district’s students with the need to be good stewards of the voters’ money,” said AUHSD Board President Jennifer Chen. “We tried to hold out as long as possible, using the carryover of one-time state and federal funding. But that’s no longer an option, and one of the main justifications to not wait is that without new revenue, we’re facing significant cuts in programs.”
    The new tax would affect property owners in Orinda, Moraga, Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Canyon who fall within the district that includes Miramonte, Campolindo, Acalanes and Las Lomas high schools, as well as the Acalanes Center for Independent Study.
    The Acalanes district already has a $301 parcel tax (Measure G and A) in place, which would not be affected.
    The new parcel tax would raise roughly an additional $4.5 million annually and would automatically adjust for inflation based on annual percentage changes in the local consumer price index over the prior 12 months – though increases would be capped at 3% per year.
    While parcel taxes support district operations and staff, the proposed new tax revenues could not be used for administrative salaries and benefits.
    “Parcel taxes and other local support from parents’ clubs and education foundations pay for the things that elevate our schools to the level parents expect,” said AUHSD Superintendent John Nickerson. “Our high schools are among the best in California and the opportunities our students have are extraordinary, including Advanced Placement classes and other electives. Without this parcel tax, some programs simply will have to be cut.”
    The Acalanes Union High School District’s 2024-2025 budget is $104 million, and of that amount, about $10.5 million comes from the current parcel taxes initially approved by voters in 2005 and 2010.
    But while Measure G and A revenues have remained about the same (depending on the annual number of parcels and exemptions in the district), inflation has been eroding the value of the tax, and it now accounts for about 10% of the district’s revenue, down from over 19% when it was enacted.
    Some of the budget stress is a result of the radically different school funding formula California adopted in 2013, known as the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The goal was to better meet the needs of school districts with higher percentages of English Learners and foster children and students from low-income families.
    For example, Oakland’s highly diverse student population generates state funding of approximately $30,000 per student, compared with about $20,000 in the Acalanes district.
    “Obviously, districts that have more students who face major challenges have higher costs to educate them,” Nickerson said. “But we believe that the whole formula is flawed. State funding that is allocated to cover basic educational expenses is insufficient, and that has hit AUHSD especially hard. Since the advent of the LCFF, AUHSD has received the lowest state funding of any high school district in California. Even considering support from other sources, such as education foundations and parents clubs, our per pupil funding is slightly below the 
state average.”
    The district’s now-structural deficit started well before the pandemic, punctuated by intermittent influxes of one-time state and federal funding. The board put some of the extra money into its reserves and used the rest to support elective programs that were once fully funded by parcel tax and education foundation support.
    However, with the projected deficits, a reserve fund that started out as a healthy 19% of the annual budget at the beginning of this year, will be whittled down well below the recommended 10% in reserves by the end of this year.
    “We were able to paper over the budget problems with federal and state one-time revenues during the pandemic,” said Dr. Chris Severson, an Acalanes district board member for six years until his resignation last December. “Now that is drying up.”
    Late last year the board unanimously agreed to commission a study to determine the feasibility of a successful parcel tax. A survey of more than 1,100 district voters concluded that there was a high probability of support, leading the district to move ahead with the special election resolution.
    If passed, the district would begin revenue collection on July 1.
    “We would not move forward with the special election if we didn’t feel confident the community will support it,” said Chen.
    Considering the possibility the parcel tax might not succeed and foreseeing several more years of deficits, the board has asked a committee to develop a list of cuts to be implemented over the next two to three years – whether or not the parcel tax passes, according to Nickerson.
    “We believe there are areas where we can save money,” he said.