The Tam Union budget, explained.

01First, three things about how this works

School finance has its own vocabulary. Here is a quick level set before you read the rest of this doc.

02Is the district in financial trouble?

No. But that does not mean circumstances cannot change quickly.

The state keeps a list. Tam Union has never been on it

Twice a year, every California district certifies its own financial position as Positive, Qualified (may not meet obligations) or Negative (will not meet them), and the county superintendent reviews it and may change it. The lists are public and go back to 1995-96.

03So what should we keep an eye on?

Two trends, both of which point the same direction, and neither of which shows up in a single year's numbers.

1. The reserve cushion is thinning

On closed books, ending reserves as a share of annual spending:

Above the floor every year, and down in every year but one, from 22.1% to 18.0%.

That 22.1% starting point matters. It was lifted by one-time federal COVID relief, money that arrived in 2020-21 and has since been spent. So the high water mark was temporary, and what has happened since is the tide going back out.

Notice also that the dollar balance barely moves across those six years: about $22M to about $23M. The percentage falls anyway, because the budget it has to cover keeps growing. A flat reserve against a rising budget is a shrinking cushion.

The gap to the 17% floor is now a single percentage point. Staying above a target is not the same as holding steady.

For context on the other side: reserves stood at 16.0% in FY2018-19, below the Board Policy floor, and across a comparable group of twelve Bay Area districts Tam Union's reserve change since 2020-21 sits in the middle — several did better, four did worse.

2. Enrollment is in a long, predicted decline

This is not a surprise and it is not anyone's fault. It is demographic, it affects districts across Marin, and the district has been projecting it for years.

But it interacts badly with being a basic aid district. Revenue does not fall when enrollment falls, so the district does not face the funding cliff a state-funded district would. What happens instead is that the cost of running the district is spread over fewer and fewer students. Spending per student has gone from $18,942 to $28,394 in seven years, up 49.9%.

That sounds like good news. Mostly it is not. A rising figure per student would be worth celebrating if it meant more arriving in each classroom. Two things say it does not.

First, most costs do not shrink when enrollment does. A campus still needs a principal, an office, a counseling team, a library, heating and a roof whether it enrolls 4,891 students or 4,227. You cannot operate 86% of a principal. Losing students raises the cost per student automatically, without a single extra dollar reaching a class.

Second, look at where the growth actually went. Across those same seven years, FY2017-18 to FY2024-25:

Spending per student rose 49.9%. Spending on teachers per student rose 26.8%, and the classroom payroll grew more slowly than every other category and more slowly than the budget as a whole. The per-student number went up. The share of it going to teaching went down.

Fewer students also means a smaller case for new revenue at exactly the moment the district needs to ask for it. Which brings us to 2029.

04Where the money comes from

Property tax follows assessed values. State and federal funds follow formulas. Apart from a small amount of facility rental and fee income, roughly 85% of this money arrives regardless of any decision made by the board.

The parcel tax is the exception, and it is the board's to shape. The board writes the measure: the dollar amount per parcel, the term, the annual escalator. What it cannot do is impose it. Voters have to approve it, and once they have, the board cannot change it without going back and asking again.

05Where it goes

Almost four-fifths of the budget is people, and their pay is set in collective bargaining agreements signed before the year begins. A board cannot reopen them mid-year.

The board is not at the bargaining table. Contracts are negotiated between district staff and the unions, then brought to the board for a vote. Trustees can approve or reject, and in practice they approve. They cannot set pay unilaterally, and state law bars them from budgeting for a raise before it is settled.

06The biggest number nobody talks about

If you want one explanation for why this district feels squeezed, it is special education. It has grown faster than anything else, it is legally required, and it is not a local choice.

Special education went from 16.2% to 20.7% of everything the district spends, and nearly doubled per student.

Over four years, those transfers grew by $6.20M. That is the direction of travel: special education takes a bigger chunk year in and year out, from 16.2% of all district spending in 2017-18 to 20.7% now, and every dollar of it is a dollar that is no longer available for anything else.

And none of it is optional

Between FY2020-21 and FY2024-25 alone, special education added $7,600,337 of annual cost, a rise of 44%.

This is the one large cost nobody locally can do anything about. A board cannot decline to serve a student with an IEP, cannot cap the caseload and cannot opt out. That cost arrives whether anyone likes it or not.

07Pensions: what actually happened

Pensions come up constantly in local argument, usually with the claim that they are an ever-worsening squeeze. The cost is real and large. The "ever-worsening" part is no longer true.

In 2014 the state passed Assembly Bill 1469, which sharply increased what districts must pay into the teachers' retirement system. It was not optional and districts had no say.

Both have now levelled off

The teachers' rate reached 19.10% in 2023-24 and has not moved since. The district's own multiyear projection carries it flat at 19.10% all the way through 2028-29, noting that "the STRS rate is estimated to remain constant."

The classified rate climbed much further, from 11.77% to 26.81%, more than doubling. But it has plateaued too, and the district projects it drifting slightly down, to 25.90% by 2028-29.

So the ramp is over. What it left behind is a permanently higher baseline, and that is the part that matters: $17.2M a year, 14% of everything the district spends, none of it a local decision. AB 1469 is a complete explanation of why budgets tightened between 2014 and 2022. It is not an explanation of fresh pressure now, because neither rate is still climbing.

08Are teachers paid well?

Yes, and they are losing ground.

The raises are real

Teacher pay here has risen 27.6% over the six years that can be measured directly, from $102,469 in FY2018-19 to $130,716 in FY2024-25. Carrying that forward at the salary schedule's own 8.38% increase for FY2026-27 gives about 38% across the full eight-year window — the last two years are projected, not measured, because the state's certificated salary collection moved from Form J-90 to C-90 and FY2025-26 is not yet published. These figures include step advancement as teachers move up the schedule, not only negotiated increases. The report covers teachers only; administrators are on separate schedules and are not in it.

And it is still slipping against the top of the state

The gap to the top-paying district has grown from $13,381 to $50,606.

Most of this slide happened before December 2018. From 2012-13 to 2017-18 Tam Union's share of the top-paying district's salary fell from 87 cents to 76 cents. Since 2018-19 it has fallen from 75 to 72 cents, about four times more slowly, and Tam Union's statewide rank has moved from 7th of 68 to 6th of 66. The slide is thirteen years long, it has slowed, and it has not stopped.

09Spending on administration grew despite lower enrollment

Yes, and unlike almost everything else on this page, this one is a decision that involves the board.

These are payroll totals, not raises. Average teacher pay rose about 21% over the same four years, so the teacher line is nearly flat because there are fewer teachers. Behind the administrator line, the district's own documents show new management positions, including directors of human resources and technology, and management pay increases.

The clearest way to see it is the ratio. Administrator pay went from 11.8% of teacher pay in FY2018-19, the last budget adopted before this board took office, to 16.9% in FY2024-25, rising in every one of those six years. Almost none of the administrator growth since FY2020-21 is inside special education.

Across a comparable group of twelve Bay Area districts, Tam Union included, administrator payroll rose everywhere from FY2020-21 to FY2024-25, and seven of the other eleven now run a higher ratio of administrator pay to teacher pay.

Which is the opposite of what you would expect

Every other large cost on this page moves for a reason you can point to. Special education rose because student need rose. Pensions rose because Sacramento raised the rates. Salaries rose because contracts were negotiated. Administration moved in the opposite direction from the thing it exists to serve.

The district now has 664 fewer students than it did in 2020-21 and spends $1.76M more a year on administrators. A district serving fewer children would normally need less administrative capacity, not more, and the ratio has climbed in every single one of the last six years.

In February 2025 the district's Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations told the board it had to cut at least 1.2 full-time-equivalent certificated administrator positions because of a state-set ratio limiting administrators relative to teaching staff. A district does not reach a statutory staffing ceiling by accident.

10So what does the board actually decide?

Put the last six sections together and the answer is more complicated than either side says. A board controls very little of what comes in or out.

This is not an excuse for a board and it is not a defense of one. It is the frame the election should be judged in. Asking whether trustees "managed the finances well" is mostly asking about things they do not control. Asking what they did with the choices that were actually theirs is a question with an answer.

And it does not write the budget either

This is the most common misconception about how a school district works. Trustees are part-time elected volunteers. They do not build the budget, and in California they are not expected to.

The document is prepared by the district's Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations, a full-time professional finance officer, working through the year with county and state reporting requirements. The superintendent, as the district's chief executive, works with that official on priorities and brings the finished budget forward as a recommendation. The board then votes to adopt it, or does not.

So when you hear that a board "balanced the budget" or "managed the finances," what happened procedurally is that professional staff produced a balanced budget and the board approved it. The board's contribution is the approving.

On that, the record is unambiguous. Across 33 budget checkpoints in eight years, no budget has been voted down, amended, or sent back by the board. Not once.

That is not a criticism of the budgets themselves. On every external measure the district's business office has done its job well: never once flagged by the state in thirty years, reserves held above target in every year since 2020, and a September close that has come in better than the June estimate six years running. The competence in this record belongs to the Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations and that team, not to the people voting yes.

11The one thing they control, and the record on it

Ask what the parcel tax actually buys and the abstraction disappears. According to the district's own Parcel Tax Citizens' Oversight Committee report for 2024-25, accepted by the board, the district spent all $17,969,731.62 the parcel tax collected on the salaries and benefits of 120 teachers and counselors — every dollar of it, with nothing carried forward. Redwood, Archie Williams and Tamalpais each received the same $5,390,919; San Andreas and Tamiscal $898,486.58 each.

That is what is on the table in 2029. Getting it renewed, at a level that keeps up with costs, is the single most consequential thing a Tam Union board does. It is the only money the district raises by asking, and asking is the board's job.

Tam Union voters first approved a parcel tax in 1989. For the thirty-one years after that, every time the district asked — parcel taxes and bonds alike — the community said yes.

Seven measures from 1989 to 2018. Every one passed, none below 66.9%. Then two failures, both since 2018, and both the first of their kind on record since 1983.

Both times, the second ask was smaller

The two are not the same. The November 2020 parcel tax was a straight renewal of money that already existed: the district asked for a higher rate, lost, and returned asking only to keep what it had. Net new revenue from a year of campaigning: nothing. The November 2024 bond is genuinely new borrowing, but $228M less than the district had said it needed, and staff published the list of projects the smaller bond would not cover.

And in 2026, no ask at all

In August 2025 the board formed a parcel tax exploratory committee and hired consultants. Polling came back in January 2026. At the meeting of 16 June 2026 the chair asked whether to continue. (The author of this brief spoke during public comment on this item, after the chair had found no motion and announced that the committee would not continue.)

Is there a motion to continue the parcel tax ad hoc exploratory committee? … Okay, seeing no motion, then we're not continuing the committee, and there'll be no need for polling, and there will not be an agenda item on the ballot in August. Cynthia Roenisch, Board President, TUHSD, 16 June 2026

No motion came. The committee simply lapsed.

For comparison: in June 2020 the district's consultant polled the renewal in a 67-71% range, the board went to the ballot anyway, and it passed at 73.6%. In June 2026, polling at 67%, the board would not continue the study. Marin feeder districts passed measures at up to 74% that same month.

Who held which office at each point

Officer roles are from the board's own organizational meetings of 17 December 2019, 12 December 2023 and 9 December 2025. Roenisch and Saavedra were elected in November 2018 and re-elected in 2022. Harlander served through December 2024.

Why this matters for 2029

From 1989 to 2018, across seven consecutive measures, Tam Union never lost. Not once, and never below 66.9%.

Since these three have been placing the measures, the district has gone to voters four times. Those four ballots were really two asks, each made twice: a parcel tax and a bond.

Both were rejected at the size the board first proposed. Both passed on the second attempt, only after the size had been cut. The parcel tax came back as a renewal carrying no new money at all. The bond came back 44% smaller than the one voters had just turned down.

Then, in 2026, with the renewal in sight and polling at the same 67% that preceded a 73.6% win in 2020, they did not ask at all.

12What happens in 2029

This is the part of the page that matters after the election is over.

Measure M, the current parcel tax, raised $18.0M in FY2024-25 and $18.5M in FY2025-26, roughly 15% of what the district spends. It expires at the end of the 2028-29 school year.

The district's Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations told the board in June 2020 what losing it would mean: without renewal, the projected operating deficit would have gone to "$18.8 million in the red relative to roughly a $95 million budget, that is beyond significant."

And the renewal has to pass before it expires

A replacement has to pass before the old tax expires, or the money simply stops. Measure M runs out at the end of the 2028-29 school year, so the renewal has to be won at an election before then. Trustees at the 16 June 2026 meeting pointed to 2028.

By declining to go to voters in November 2026, the board left itself fewer chances before that deadline. A trustee said as much at the June meeting, while arguing to keep the work going:

I am nervous about getting to 2028 because then we are facing a fiscal cliff and if it doesn't pass, you know, we're looking at massive cuts. So there would be two opportunities, like you said, but that to me is scary. TUHSD trustee, 16 June 2026

That matters because of the record above. Both times this group has gone to voters at a size it chose, the first ask failed and a smaller second ask had to follow. If that pattern repeats, a failed first attempt leaves little room before the money stops.

A straight renewal will not be enough

Measure M grows 3% a year. District costs do not. From the same official in June 2026:

school district expenditures are growing by 5.8 to 6% each year. Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations, TUHSD, 16 June 2026

A 3% escalator against 6% cost growth loses about three points of purchasing power every year, compounding across a nine-year term. Renewing at the current level keeps the district standing still while its costs keep moving.

So whoever is elected has a responsibility that cannot be delegated to staff, to the county or to Sacramento: put a strong parcel tax on the ballot and win it. That needs two-thirds of this community. You do not get two-thirds without trust.

On that specific test, the record of Cynthia Roenisch, Kevin Saavedra and Leslie Harlander is already written. The only time they asked voters to increase the parcel tax, it failed. The renewal they did pass added nothing. The bond they won was 44% smaller than the one they had just lost. And in 2026, with the deadline in sight, they chose not to ask at all.

13Where all of this comes from

Every figure on this page comes from one of the following. Where a figure is projected rather than measured, it says so at the figure.

• Tam Union's own budget filings, 2017-18 through 2026-27: all 67 documents, including the presentation shown to the board with each one. Published by the district on its business operations page.
• State standardized accounting records (SACS): the account-level detail every California district files, used here for spending by category and by purpose.
• Form J-90: the certificated salary report every district files with the state, covering every reporting California high school district from 2012-13 to 2024-25.
• Ed-Data local revenue elections: every California school bond and parcel tax election since 1983, including the ones that failed.
• Account-level special education analysis: used for the finding that almost none of the administrator growth in section 9 since FY2020-21 sits inside special education ($26,936 of $1.76M), derived from the SACS goal-coded detail.
• Parcel Tax Citizens' Oversight Committee annual report, 2024-25: the board-accepted report on Measure M spending, and the staff-level spreadsheet published with it, which lists every parcel-tax-funded position by department and campus. Published by the district on its business operations page.
• Certified Marin County election results.
• Board minutes, agendas and meeting recordings, 2017 to 2026, including the organizational meetings that set officer roles each December.