District overview
Mill Valley School District
Funding structure, how it compares to peers, and where major projects stand.
Why is this district funded differently?
Most California districts are funded through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF): the state guarantees a per-student amount, and local property tax counts toward it. Mill Valley's property tax revenue already exceeds what LCFF would guarantee, so the state sends essentially no aid — the district keeps its property tax instead. This is automatic, based purely on arithmetic each year; no district opts into it.
No revenue for enrollment growth
An LCFF district is paid per student, so a new student brings roughly $11,800–$17,500 depending on grade level. A community-funded district receives nothing extra for the same student. When Mill Valley added 24 staff for Transitional Kindergarten, it received none of the state funding created specifically to pay for that expansion.
No annual cost-of-living adjustment
The state funds a COLA for LCFF districts every year — 2.87% for 2026-27. Community-funded districts receive none of it, even as salaries, benefits and operating costs rise at the same rate as everyone else's.
Unfunded state mandates land without an offset
When the state adds a new requirement, it sometimes adds LCFF funding to cover it — as it did with a 1.44% increase to offset a new paid pregnancy disability leave mandate. The district's own budget states that increase does not reach community-funded districts, which absorb the mandate's cost with no matching revenue.
Revenue growth is capped by property values, not need
The district's main revenue lever is property tax growth (4.26% projected for 2026-27) plus the voter-approved parcel tax. Both move independently of how many students the district serves or what it costs to serve them.
This is also why Mill Valley spends more per student than the California average — it keeps property tax revenue an LCFF district would send to the state pool. Being community funded is a real advantage in absolute dollars; the structural problem is that the advantage does not scale with cost or enrollment the way LCFF funding does.
Where the district stands
Budgeted at 2,400 for 2026-27; up from 2,282 in 2023-24, roughly +2.4%/year.
ADA drives funding calculations. Runs about 95.7% of enrollment.
Board policy sets a 25% minimum and 30% target — the district is below its own floor in every projected year through 2028-29.
Both figures exclude capital spending, so the $66.3M bond-funded renovation is in neither. Comparison years differ by 3-4 years, so the real gap is narrower than the raw difference suggests.
The state's Criteria and Standards review marks this 'Not Met' — unrestricted deficit spending exceeded the standard in two or more of the last three years. The reserve criterion itself is marked 'Met'.
About 265% of the US median. The parcel tax is flat per parcel, so it does not scale with home value or income.
Major projects
Mill Valley Middle School renovation
Under construction — interim campus phaseOriginally planned as a new building; the Board reversed course in December 2025 to renovate the existing structure after costs exceeded budget. Students move to a temporary on-site campus in December 2026, with permanent renovation anticipated complete in 2029.
- Draft EIR released; original new-build plan under public comment
- Final EIR certified; Board approves renovation (Alternative 5) instead of new construction
- ~$25.7M committed to interim housing, modular lease and preconstruction
- Project exempted from City and County zoning and land use review
- Design development update presented to the Board
- Design Development phase complete; moving to Construction Documents
Funding
Measure G bond (Building Fund 21) — legally restricted to construction, cannot fund salaries or programs
$25,728,379 committed to interim housing alone
Interim (temporary) housing costs are separate from the permanent renovation budget.
School lunch provider transition
Complete — new provider starts this school yearAfter a competitive bid among three vendors including blind taste tests with students, the Board selected Revolution Foods over incumbent LunchMaster for 2026-27. Revolution Foods previously ran the district's meal program from 2008.
- Board approves Revolution Foods as the 2026-27 meal provider
Funding
Cafeteria Fund 13
The Books & Supplies line the vendor contract sits in is budgeted identically across both years ($591,652), despite the provider change — worth watching for a mid-year revision. The fund itself is structurally short: $585,630 revenue against $784,621 expenditure for 2026-27, and its reserve is projected to go negative this year.
Recent news
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Figures verified against the corpus are marked as such and cite the document and phrase. Peer and state comparisons come from NCES, EdSource and Census data and are marked unverified against this corpus — they describe context, not a claim about a Mill Valley document.
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