San Mateo County has 23 school districts, 20 cities and a population whose daily lives respect almost none of those borders.
The family that lives in Foster City has a parent commuting to Redwood City and another working in San Francisco. Their kid goes to school in San Mateo and plays soccer on a team based in Burlingame. They grocery shop in Belmont because they like crossing the street to check out the farmers’ market while they’re there, and they spend their Sundays at the beach in Half Moon Bay. The lines that define where children attend school, where school funding comes from, and where governance decisions get made are real, but they bear almost no relationship to the lines that define how families actually live in this region.
One of the agencies designed to think across city and district borders is the County Office of Education.
It supports districts the state has flagged as struggling and educates students whose needs are too specialized for any single district such as youth involved in the juvenile justice system, students with extensive disabilities, foster youth who move between school placements. It approves and certifies every county district’s annual budget, and it is the backstop that keeps districts out of state takeover when their finances slip. It serves all 84,000 public school students in the county across 23 school districts, with about 300 employees and a budget of roughly $110 million.
As Héctor Camacho — a longtime educator who has served as a teacher and counselor, an 11-year board trustee on the County Board of Education, current executive at the San Mateo County Office of Education, and the candidate this paper endorsed earlier this month — put it, “I’m looking at all 23 districts, including our own, which I call the 24th district. Our children and their parents are crossing city lines all the time, to go to work, shop and recreate. Our job is to balance what’s happening in classrooms today with the workforce and residents those kids are going to become.”
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That regional vantage is becoming more important right now than it has been in years — it comes up in transportation, housing, taxation, education, jobs and more. As much as some would like, the “leave my city alone” position is simply not viable anymore. Just last week, news outlets reported that California public schools enrolled roughly 75,000 fewer students in 2025-26 than the year before, a 1.3% decline and the largest single-year drop since the pandemic. We knew it was coming: Birth rates have been declining for years and California in-migration cratered from 312,761 to 109,278 between 2024-25 according to the U.S. Census. How that demographic shift impacts any one school district will look different depending on whether they are funded by enrollment, by local property tax (or you might hear “community funded”), or by some combination, but the pattern across the county will take the same shape.
The County Office of Education is designed to coordinate at scale across districts and cities that share a region but focus on its unique demographic. While socioeconomics have long driven in-district funding, the reality we need to come to terms with is regardless of socioeconomics, students across jurisdiction borders universally share similar challenges so there are areas where cross-region coordination absolutely makes sense.
What this can look like when countywide efforts work is the Big Lift, San Mateo County’s collective-impact early childhood initiative, funded through Measure K. Coordinated across the County Office of Education, the county government, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and participating school districts, it was built explicitly to span district lines and address universal challenges with early literacy. Per the 2021 RAND “Five Years In” report, Big Lift preschoolers were 17 percentage points more likely to be kindergarten-ready than nonattenders, and English-learner reclassification rates were 31% versus 15%.
On your ballot this June is the superintendent for the County Office of Education, the person who will lead through January 2031. The role is part operational — running the agency that educates specialized student populations, certifying every district’s budget, and leading a large multidisciplinary team — and part regional, looking out for the educational outcomes of all 84,000 students across district and city borders.
As we look ahead to increasingly challenging funding years for California across multiple vectors, it is a more strategic role than I think most of us give it credit for, one that requires a level of operational experience. The borders that fund our schools and the borders that hold our lives have not lined up for a long time, and leadership for this incredibly important agency built to think across those borders and prioritize our youth is on your ballot in the coming weeks.
Annie Tsai is chief operating officer at Interact and three-time author, leads community engagement and learning for Moms in Tech, and is a city and county commissioner, among other things. She can be reached at: media@annietsai.co.
Thanks for your column today, Ms. Tsai. My biggest takeaway is that there are 300 employees with a budget of $110 million for a department that doesn’t educate. Why? How many administrative employees at separate school districts perform duplicative functions? And with decreasing school enrollment and academic test scores which are nothing to write home about, how effective are these 300 employees?
Seems to me that we need to reimagine the Office of Education, and with much less than 300 employees and a much smaller budget. The problem is not funding; the problem is in continually paying for ever-increasing salaries, pensions, and benefits of 300 employees serving a smaller enrollment.
Since schools are facing lower attendance why not adopt the University and sell off the extra capacity to those who live farther away and commute to the region for work? Letting seats sit empty and crying there is no money makes no sense. I would also favor combining districts. No need to have so many. It is all technically State money so boundaries should not matter.
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(3) comments
Thanks for your column today, Ms. Tsai. My biggest takeaway is that there are 300 employees with a budget of $110 million for a department that doesn’t educate. Why? How many administrative employees at separate school districts perform duplicative functions? And with decreasing school enrollment and academic test scores which are nothing to write home about, how effective are these 300 employees?
Seems to me that we need to reimagine the Office of Education, and with much less than 300 employees and a much smaller budget. The problem is not funding; the problem is in continually paying for ever-increasing salaries, pensions, and benefits of 300 employees serving a smaller enrollment.
Please delete my unfinished comments. My laptop is acting up.
Since schools are facing lower attendance why not adopt the University and sell off the extra capacity to those who live farther away and commute to the region for work? Letting seats sit empty and crying there is no money makes no sense. I would also favor combining districts. No need to have so many. It is all technically State money so boundaries should not matter.
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Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.