School district in Burlingame flips funding

The Burlingame School District’s funding designation recently flipped, and the mechanisms that influenced the shift were described in a recent presentation to the Board of Trustees by Kevin Bultema, the deputy superintendent of Business Services for the San Mateo County Office of Education. 

Some districts are funded primarily through property taxes, if that revenue sufficiently meets the amount entitled to the district. This is the case for the significant majority of districts in San Mateo County, referred to as basic aid or community-funded districts. Any excess property tax revenue can be kept by the districts too. 

For four of the 23 districts in the county, including Burlingame School District, it’s not as simple.  

When property taxes only partially meet the amount entitled to the district, they are supplemented with state funds to make up for the shortfall, and are referred to as state-funded districts — though property taxes still go toward the local schools. 

Unlike community-funded districts that may get lucky with extra property tax revenue, state-funded districts do not. They do, however, receive supplemental property taxes from the reassessment of properties, but in the following school year. 

It is these supplemental property taxes that are a major cause of “flipping” districts between state funded and community funded. 

While the supplemental property taxes help districts to garner excess funds, their inclusion in the district’s revenue calculation can mean a district moves up to a community-funded designation. However, when a district is community funded, they stop receiving the supplemental property taxes which could in turn flip the designation back. 

Not only can supplemental property taxes get distributed in the middle of the school year but, due to the fact that so few districts receive these dollars, the amount allocated to each can be significant. 

“These are very volatile, very difficult to predict [numbers],” Bultema said. 

The Burlingame School District was previously designated as state-funded, but flipped in April to a community-funded designation, with an extra $450,000 in the current school year’s budget, Bultema said. 

This movement from state funding to community funding can be seen as the better shift of the two options, Bultema said. 

Districts in this scenario have received state funding all school year long, and then get property taxes when apportioned, typically in December and April. 

“What you want to be paying attention to is when and potentially that flips,” Bultema said. 

If a community-funded district flips and is determined to be state-funded, the county will immediately pull back property tax allocations. This can mean no property tax appropriations in December and April, and the state won’t turn on revenue until February, Bultema said. 

School districts may go “almost an entire year” without any cash,” Bultema said. 

There is a “high potential” that the Burlingame School District switching designations in the next three to five years, according to Bultema’s presentation. 

For BSD and others in San Mateo County teetering the funding designation line, their cash flow can change often, which leaves districts unable to to entirely be sure of when and from where their money will come. 

“It’s difficult to have assumptions that you can fully rely on in your multi-year projects especially if you’re flipping in and out,” Bultema said. 

This has been the case recently for the Millbrae School District. In the 2023-24 school year, the Millbrae district was designated as state funded, and thus received supplemental taxes during the 2024-25 school year. This revenue flipped the district to be community funded in the 2025-26 school year in which it has not received supplemental property taxes.

The San Carlos School District was designated community funded in the 2022-23 school year and, without the supplemental taxes, fell to the state-funding designation in the following school year. 

While the San Mateo County Office of Education looks to support districts in this financial situation through loans, Bultema said improvements to the state’s process and communication between county assessor and controller offices must happen as well. 

ana@smdailyjournal.com

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