The Acalanes Union High School District wants a third parcel tax on top of the $301 every parcel already pays each year. On the funding we provide now, its schools rank in the nation's top 5 percent. The money is there. The priorities are wrong.
The core of it
The Acalanes Union High School District does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. State data show the district's cost per student roughly doubled between 2012-13 and 2024-25, rising from $10,305 to $20,508, a 99 percent increase, while Bay Area consumer prices rose about 45 percent over the same years. Much of that money never reached the classroom. It went to wellness centers on each campus, a growing central administration, and non-academic diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging programming.
The district already collects two permanent parcel taxes totaling $301 a year on every parcel, on top of the parcel taxes homeowners pay to each TK-8 feeder district and the property taxes that repay AUHSD's bonds. Just last year the district spent $834,000 on a standalone special election for Measure T, a $130 parcel tax that voters rejected. Eighteen months later the board is back with Measure W, a $168 parcel tax lasting eight years, nearly 30 percent larger than the tax the community already turned down. More than $68,000 has gone to Measure W polling and consultants before a single vote has been cast.
California's current budget also handed the district a one-time grant of nearly $5 million, and AUHSD's property tax revenue keeps climbing as home values rise. The district is not short of money. It is choosing where to spend it, and where to cut. A third parcel tax rewards the same pattern of rising costs rather than requiring the district to account for them. Fewer than one in ten households in the district has a child enrolled in these schools, yet a parcel tax charges the owner of a small condominium the same flat amount as the owner of a mansion, regardless of ability to pay.
By the numbers
Point by point
This is not an expense problem, it is a revenue problem. AUHSD ranks near the bottom of California districts for state and federal funding and receives about $16,082 per pupil.
AUHSD is a community-funded district, financed mainly by local property taxes that rise with home values, which is exactly why it draws little from the state. Low state funding is a feature of that model, not evidence of deprivation. Counting all sources, the district's own spending reached $20,508 per student in 2024-25, above the state average the Yes campaign cites. The lower figure counts state and federal dollars alone and leaves out the local property and parcel taxes that do the real funding.
Our four high schools rank among the top 5 percent nationwide. Without Measure W, drastic cuts will continue and students will suffer.
They reached that ranking on the taxes we pay now. A top-5-percent result is the strongest evidence that the current budget is sufficient to deliver an excellent education. If that standing depended on the next parcel tax, the district would not already be there.
AUHSD's last new funding measure was 16 years ago, and the district has cut $4.2 million in the last two years alone.
The district put a new parcel tax on the ballot 18 months ago and lost. It collects $301 per parcel every year with no expiration, it received a one-time state grant of nearly $5 million in the current budget, and its property tax revenue keeps climbing with assessed values. Where the district cuts is a choice the board is making, not a shortage the taxpayers created.
Mandatory taxpayer protections: no funds for administrators' salaries, Citizens' Oversight and independent audits, and all funds stay local.
Money is fungible. A parcel tax earmarked for teachers frees existing dollars for everything else, including the central administration the "no administrator salaries" clause is meant to reassure you about. Oversight of this kind did not stop the board from approving $2.1 million in special education contracts with out-of-state residential facilities in 2025-26, including $436,360 for a single placement at a Utah program that that state's own regulators had decertified.
We have only one librarian for four high schools due to cuts. Measure W will retain teachers and maintain manageable class sizes.
These are choices, not necessities. The district spends more than $20,000 per student and reports average class sizes around 28. It carries an average cost of roughly $378,000 per teacher, of which only about $150,000 reaches the teacher as salary and benefits. Before asking for a new tax, the district could account for the difference between the two figures.
Senior citizens are eligible for an exemption, so the tax is fair.
A parcel tax still ignores ability to pay for everyone else. It charges the owner of a small condominium the same as the owner of a mansion. Combined with the region's other new and proposed taxes, it makes an already expensive area less affordable, and it asks the more than nine in ten households with no child in these schools to pay the same flat amount as families who use them.
Who opposes it
The full arguments for and against Measure W appear in the official Contra Costa County voter information guide. You can read the Yes campaign's case at yesforourhighschools.com.
AUHSD already runs some of the best-funded, highest-ranked high schools in the country. Measure W asks for more of the same, from taxpayers who are stretched thin enough. Talk to your neighbors, share this page, and when your ballot arrives, vote No.
Vote NO on Measure W