It’s a question that Orinda Schools Superintendent Aida Glimme says she faces often:
If school districts start with the same base amount for each age span, why do Orinda schools end up among the lowest publicly funded schools in the state?
The answer is found in the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which starts with a base per pupil funding amount for every district consisting of property taxes and state General Fund revenues (primarily income taxes), then piles on additional funding district-by-district.
The system is designed to provide more money to schools and districts that have a higher concentration of “defined needs” students, which include English learners, foster youth and low-income families.
These add-ons help some districts qualify for up to double the amount of state and federal funding received by the Orinda and Acalanes districts.
California’s property tax revenues (excluding parcel taxes) are collected at the county level but disbursed by the state along with state income tax revenue, according to the formula.
To come up with the base rate, students are divided into age groupings: TK (Transitional Kindergarten) to grade 3; grade 4 to grade 6; grades 7 and 8; and grades 9 to 12.
Each age range receives a different funding level, with TK and grades 9-12 receiving extra funding because they’re deemed more expensive to educate. The per pupil amounts last year ranged from $10,025 to $10,478 in TK-8, with school districts receiving extra money for each TK pupil to maintain low student-teacher ratios. High school districts (grades 9-12) received $12,144 per pupil.
The formula gives schools supplemental grants for students with specific defined needs, and concentration grants if a high percentage of students fall into that category. All rates (including the base amount) are based on average daily attendance, not merely enrollment.
All schools receive 20% extra per pupil funding for each defined needs student. (A student can only be counted once.) Districts such as Brentwood, Martinez and Oakley, which have percentages of defined needs students ranging from 32% to over 50% of enrollment, receive significantly more extra funding this way than Acalanes Union High School District (10% of students) or Orinda (less than 5%).
Districts with percentages of defined needs students over 55% qualify for yet another bump in funding – a 65% concentration grant for each student over that threshold. Local districts such as Oakland, Mt. Diablo, Pittsburg, Antioch and West Contra Costa receive this additional funding, as do more than half of all districts statewide.
But there is still another contributor to the funding gap between what a district like Oakland, where the percentage of defined needs students is over 82%, and Orinda/Acalanes districts. It’s the “Equity Multiplier,” which began in the 2023-24 school year. It gives individual school sites with more than 70% of defined needs students an extra $939 in per pupil funding.
“I think that’s the complexity of LCFF, and that’s the number one question that we get from parents,” said Glimme. “When we start messaging that we’re one of the lowest paid (districts) … they don’t understand … And it comes down to that unduplicated count.”
Federal education dollars figure in, too.
The average California district receives about 6% of its budget from federal education dollars, largely allocated to schools with high percentages of low-income students. Orinda and Acalanes districts receive 1% or less of their budget from federal funding.
All these factors add up to vast differences in per pupil revenue. In the 2024-25 school year, Oakland received over $26,081 per student from state and federal sources – with nearly $12,000 based on its “high needs” student population. Orinda received just $12,186 per pupil from the same sources.
Without extraordinary local support that includes parcel taxes of $2,139 per student and education foundation contributions of $1,782 per pupil, Orinda Union could not survive – and certainly couldn’t compete for quality teachers and other staff members. Today, local support supplies 27% of the district’s revenues.
Both Glimme and John Nickerson, Acalanes Union High School District superintendent have said they agree with the philosophy behind the state’s funding formula.
“If you have more students that cost more to educate, those districts should get more money to do so from the state,” said Glimme. “I think the big challenge with LCFF is that the base is just not enough to run your schools.”
