2017-2018 total enrollment was 5132, budget was $67 million. Current school year enrollment is 4509, budget is $109 million. Per student budget in 2017 is $13055. Current year is $23214. This is 78% increase over 6 years!

Have the average tax payers of Mountain View achieved such an increase of income over 6 years??? Probably not.

Per Square Foot progressive tax. (PSF)
Reporter Kevin, "provided that the tax measure has a ceiling on how much property owners have to pay." is incorrect. The recent 2nd Appellate Court decision reaffirmed Per Square Foot (like 3 cents or 15 cents) is "uniform" and legal AND ALSO that a dollar ceiling is permitted. (not required/provided)

The recent court ruling is "Published" and available via Google Scholar.
Web Link
The PSF court ruling / clarification was affirmed in 2019 by CA Supreme Ct.
Web Link
The 'old tax' that Trustee Blakely referred to in questions/comments had "classes" of parcel sizes, and was therefore not permitted/renewed.
Web Link

I think, that a fair tax, Per Square Foot on building size (permitted) would work here IF:
1) the million square foot Google headquarters could be taxed Low Enough not to generate Chamber of Commerce, Prometheus (unchained) etc. opposition
2) the Alameda experiment (I think) has not yet been 'affirmed on appeal' to our Supreme Court. The "dollar cap" in that particular case was just under $8,000 per parcel.

3 cents per square foot (building) would be $33,000 for a 1.1 million square foot headquarters. A 750 SF one bedroom condo or Prometheus apt. would be $22.50.

At the current regressive Flat Tax, it is $191 for the headquarters, the private condo, or an Entire Prometheus apartment complex!

PSF tax payment on a 2,000 ft single family house would be $60 at a 3 cent PSR uniform rate. Or $200 at a 10 cents per square foot (building) uniform rate.

MVWSD enrollment is DECLINING even with all the new apartments that have been built so far. There is every indication the decline will continue. For the next 4 years we have kids newly eligible for TK preschool and without that this year would have seen a drop of 75 students.

The district is so money hungry that it is shameful.

Seems to me - someone has to pay for the new TK students. Not a giant influx, but the numbers are now holding steady. Here is a very recent update to enrollment data (Ed-Data.org, 2022-23). The Census Day is 1st Wed in Oct., 4th this year. But the MVWSD has published uncertified # for 2023-24)
'17-18 max 5132
2021-22 4522
2022-23 4522
2023-24 [4561] September

Truth Matters above says MVWSD is at 4509 this year and Steve Nelson says it was at 4561 in September. If I had to guess, I would say Truth Matters is more up to date seeing as how we are now past the reporting day of October 4.

The thing is that with TK, the district already has programs for some of those students, and participation is not mandatory for all students even as months of birth eligibility increase. So when the special state preschool loses students because more are in the numbers reported as K because of being now in TK, it looks like an increase when it is not. The grades 1 and 2 numbers are around 530 and last year K was 560 which included TK. So it looks like any interpretation was sunk by the apparent fact that so few of those eligible for TK are using it.

But TK is cheaper to operate than middle school grades. The district has more kids in grades 1 and 2 than it graduates in middle school each year by about 10%. so in 4 more years the middle school cohorts will likely be bigger. But it may be that numbers will fall back again for grades 1 and 2 judging by the size of the combined K and TK number.

When you consider all the new housing that has been built in the district, enrollment is not keeping up with district population of all ages. Something important is going on. All the construct has caused the district's property tax revenues to increase each year buy $5 Million or more for several years now, while enrollment holds flat. That's why a parcel tax is questionable.

If the housing in the housing element gets built it will bring a lot of new revenue to MVWSD and the housing growth that has begun for 5 years now doesn't seem to be bringing aadded students. This is all with excluding the growth in offices in North Bayshore from contributing to the district. The city wants to raise city taxes and it seems it might make more sense to be doing that than to be continuing to impose the parcel tax for the school district. Supposedly there are already plans that property tax revenue from residences in North Bayshore will be incremental to the school districts' revenue, unlike new offices.

Yes / complex. "Supposedly" when Hell Freezes Over the relatively poorer district (MVWSD, not MVLA high school or Los Altos) will be legally assured it forever gets at least 80% of the diverted property tax revenue from Shoreline (special) District. "Sunset on Shoreline" - by the legislature is the only way to permanently fix that.

I do not expect a majority of every City Council, forever, will not just decide to declare "Fiscal Emergency" and bail out of any diverted tax revenue payback (Share Shoreline). [double negative?]. (4) Council members at any time can cancel any sharing of the diverted general property tax money. As we may have recently seen / that is about as permanently effective as a microcosm of the Oslo Accords, or a Brittney Spears 'normalization' of domestic tranquility. [inherently bad pacts break down]

Keep up with the neighbors - Per Public Student Total Revenue should IMO keep up with Palo Alto and Los Altos. I consider this 'in the Common Good'. We (MVWSD) cannot do this - without some form of "Special" parcel Tax revenue. We have a much higher percentage of "High Needs" students than either of those districts.

Peace and Love and take care of your Poor

In another article,Mountain View extends deal to share tax money with local schools " I wrote. "All of the parties need to be carrying out acts of good faith" is a telling statement for just how damaged this relationship has become. I've become weary of the shenanigans of our elementary school district and am seriously considering taking an active role to vote down any parcel tax that they try to bring forward. Let's use the tax funds to buy up land that we'll need for parks given the districts fence out policies and desire to walk away from the wonderful field sharing agreements that made everyone love our neighborhood schools (whether you have school age children or not). Can we please bring in new leadership for the betterment of our community and school children? Enough is enough.

A good question is how much MVWSD keeps in reserves. Really, LASD and MVWSD are about equal in funding though LASD uses a very large parcel tax by comparison to achieve that equality.

I have heard that MVWSD is keeping a lot in reserve. It's supposed to be capped at 10% of budgeted spending. Turns out LASD has $18 Million in reserve which is about 22% of what they spend.

How does MVWSD score on this front?

LASD has a large charter school which saves it a lot of spending. The LASD total budget is about $85 Million this year for 3350 students, but there are another 1100 or so students in the charter, to which LASD has only to contribute about $10 million plus another $1M or so it does voluntarily from a 2nd parcel tax that is shared. It sounds like LASD has the same 4500 or so students but only has revenue of about $95 Million compared to MVWSD at $105 Million. So much for LASD being "richer."

@LongResident, You should do your own math. Yes? Use Ed-data.org
Some of the financials, can even have their trend-charts automatically plotted.
Find the latest Total Revenue Per Student, it is in "Financial Data" tab if you just do a District-level data-search. You could also get this from the SARC School Accountability Report Card / which also has the district's summary finances!

Reserves in MVWSD. This is harder to find (I don't even think most MVWSD Board members keep up on this!).
For the latest posted data year $38,789,754 GENERAL FUND, this is the most critical operations fund.
This percentage unallocated Reserve (leftover in General Fund) is Far Above normal! In fact, the County Office of Education has required MVWSD to file a special form. This is even over the Board's own Board Policy percent.
(wow - and they only 'projected' $25,343,830.46 for 2022-23)

The CBO of the MVWSD has much improved the public posting of Budget materials over the Last Several Years
- see Web Link

@ LoneResident and others, Be Careful: compare apples to apples / oranges to oranges
The latest data-base easy-access LASD numbers are showing that their Reserves funds structure is Way Different than MVWSD. GENERAL FUND itself (LASD) was only $2,029,670 (funds 01-08) Reserves at end of year.
There is $15 million in special obligated Funds, Debt Service and Capital Projects reserves. Those don't count for operating reserves. They are restricted use funds.

See Web Link for LASD's latest interim financial report.
It shows general fund reserves of $18 Million up from $15 Million at the start of the last fiscal year. Only $1.7M of this reserve shows as restricted.

I can't see where there are these funds with the single digits that you refer to but of the $18 Million, $16M is in object code 9789 "reserve for economic uncertainties".
The format for CAFR or ACFR is standardized but I don't know where to acccess the one
for MVWSD. I think you are referring to the form for excess reserves.

LASD has way more than $2M in reserves so I don't know where you got that number from either.

I was just looking at the old files on Ed-Data.org. They may have shifted around Funds since then! Certainly - your link is MUCH BETTER.

MVWSD recently got dinged from the county (COE) for object code 9789 "reserve for economic uncertainties" being $0 and therefore they couldn't justify their 3 yr projections. This is because Share Shoreline JPA agreement was expiring.

GREAT LA Town Crier article (IMO), Oct 11 edition (off newsstands) page 17.
"Everything you need to know about Measure A, LASD's parcel tax renewal." This is one of the best, if not the best, coverage of this very complex School Funding (basic aid district) public policy issue I ever remember reading!!! Surely, I hope the publisher 'puts it in' for one of the state local journalism awards.
@LongResident / hope U can read it.

MVWSD sort of acts like a crybaby in that we know that their reserves were never in danger of dropping to zero. Their enrollment keeps declining even with adding TK age cohorts. Putting that on a form sent to the county is like asking to be dinged. Showboating to cry for support.

The interesting thing about LASD is that they have this old parcel tax of $597 per parcel that brings in about $7.5 Million every year. Then they have this smaller property tax which has brought in maybe $2.6 Million per year.To get that passed the last time for 8 more years they knew they needed support of the charter school parents so they agreed to share tax #2 proportionately with the charter school. At that time the charter school was quite a bit smaller and the district was 1000+ students larger so the sharing started out low, maybe $350K per year to the charter school. But the district then shrank and the charter school grew so that the charter school was getting $600K for 1100 students. The thing is under the current 2nd tax, the district may "only" get $2M but they have 1000 fewer students than they did when they got $2.2M. In renewing it, the board yelped a lot about how terrible that was. The district was only getting $2M per year from parcel tax #2 along with the $7.5M from parcel tax #1. So they upped the take on parcel tax #2 to where they would get $3M per year more or less and it also goes up buy $100K every year of the remaining 7 years.

The Town Crier article omits all mention of parcel tax #1 or of shafting the charter school students by not giving them an equal share of the smaller parcel tax in which they had been sharing.

So I doubt that parcel tax will pass in LASD, under the mishandling by the district. Oh, and to run the election in a by year, they have to pay like $600K extra to the county for the election. This is a year early to renew so if they lose and put in on ballot again next year it will cost a lot less.

I know the article did not get onto the Long And Winding Road (that is Bullis in Los Altos). You are probably right that Parcel Tax LARGE and Parcel Tax Small could have had more paragraphs. And there have been giant series of Town Crier articles on all That stuff. I still think the article talks about 'the mechanics' of funding very well / not the Politics of public education in Los Altos!

The thing is that the Town Crier article does cover the Bullis aspect fairly well. The only thing it leaves unstated is that if LASD were to succeed in getting Bullis to cap enrollment at 900 and thereby force back to LASD legacy schools another 200 or so students, this would cost LASD. That might be one reason why LASD would need more money. The thing is LASD spends around $24,000 per student now and they only have to pay Bullis about $10,000 for the ones that switch there. So the question is what's the actual marginal cost of 200 more students for LASD. It's somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000 each. But that's not where I was finding fault.

I was objecting to the article not mentioning at all how there is so much funding available from regular property taxes and how that is increasing. Then it also doesn't mention how much of parcel tax funding will be continuing even should Measure A lose. Also it does not touch on expected drop off in students over the next few years, which LASD has said is generally over 50 students per year for a while. It all goes to the need of the 2nd parcel tax in the first place. Is this all directed at handling the marginal costs LASD will see from forcing the charter to kick out 200 students who would like to go there? I don't see any other real case, and I don't think they'll ever get Bullis to cut back in size.