The downsizing of courses was a site decision by administrators and principal Dr. Barnaby Payne. “I work with our school team, administrators, our data specialist, counseling, our teachers union, our teacher leaders in every department to try to develop our complete master schedule for the next year based on our enrollment, based on our budget, and based on students’ course selection,” Payne Said. “It’s like a game of Tetris trying to make all the pieces fit together.” (Cian Kelly)

The district receives approximately 80 percent of its revenue ($90,897,761) from property taxes for its unrestricted budget, according to the second interim budget report. The unrestricted budget is the district’s non-discretionary fund for general education that the district uses to finance courses across the three sites and alternative education schools. TUHSD Chief Financial Officer Corbett Elsen explained that property taxes are the driving factor in budget reductions across the district.

“Property tax revenue has dropped from our historic average of about five percent. We’re dropping it to 3.8 percent. That’s relative; that’s well over a million and a half dollars of loss of revenue per year,” Elsen said. “On the flip side, expenditures statewide are growing 5.75 percent. A two percent difference on a $140 million budget is about $2 million each year that grows unless we adjust.”

Property tax revenue has consequently stagnated as a result of lagging growth in housing demand in Marin County and the effect of California’s Proposition 13 measure. TUHSD Board Trustee Kevin Saavedra described the effect of Proposition 13 on property taxes and district revenue and how the lower-demand market hinders revenue growth for the district.

“Property taxes go up two percent a year, every year, except if someone sells,” Saavedra said. “By [Proposition] 13, someone could have bought their house 30 years ago for [$500,000], and its current value is three and a half million dollars. The value of that house, pursuant to the taxable value, would be $500,000 plus two percent a year over 25 years. Call it $750,000. But the market value can be $3 [million] to $3.5 million. So if that house sells, the property tax will be one percent of $3.5 million, but alternatively, the property tax will end up one percent of $750,000.”

The district has seen numerous reductions to courses across the three main campuses of Tamalpais High, Archie Williams and Redwood as a result of this revenue slump, including reductions to the outdoor education program TEAM at Archie Williams, which was reduced to a one-year program for budgetary reasons. More notably, the district underwent a significant reduction to the alternative education campuses of San Andreas and Tamiscal, which will be consolidated onto one campus with reduced staffing, saving the district more than $2.2 million.

The staff reductions are key for the district to remain fiscally solvent. According to the 2025-26 second interim budget report, the district spends a combined total of approximately $96,873,969 on staffing. That spending pays for certificated staff salaries, classified salaries and staff benefits. Spending on staffing represents around 75 percent of the total fund budget for the 2025-26 school year. Elsen dubbed the staff reductions as district “right-sizing.”

“The reason why … we’ve been right-sizing or reducing staffing each year [is that] we’ve had declining enrollment at each school. That’s been happening the past six years. Every year we’ve been going downhill in enrollment, every year we reduce the number of teachers because we don’t have as many students who need them,” Elsen said. “We had to reduce more this upcoming year because our revenues dropped because of the property tax revenue drop, so we had to balance our budget by making further reductions, primarily at the alternative schools and also having to tighten our staffing a little bit further at all the schools.”

Reductions are important to the district in order to maintain what Saavedra described as a financial “cushion” in the district’s reserve.

“We’re trying to rationalize our operations in light of lower revenue without having to dip into our reserves because our board is committed to keeping our reserve at 17 percent of our budget,” Saavedra said.

The financial cushion comes as the district has noted a plethora of concerns in its revenue projections, concerns that could lead to lower-than-expected revenue. Elsen mentioned rising costs due to the war in Iran and fears of an Artificial Intelligence bubble that could affect the housing market in a significantly impactful way.

“A lot of people who live here work in Silicon Valley, directly or indirectly, in financial services and technology. And if the bubble pops, there are people here that may not be able to afford to live in our community at the high value; they may have to sell it at lower values,” Elsen said. “If people aren’t buying homes, there’s less sales, the prices are going lower, interest rates go up with inflation — all that combined depresses the property tax revenue we get.”

Elsen said the 17 percent reserve is for “any uncertainty unknown.” Although there is no way to predict certain economic uncertainties, the district has worked to maintain its “rainy day” fund for emergency preparedness.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in this world, and my job is to make sure we have sustainable programming for today’s kids, tomorrow’s kids and five years from now, because all of our kids deserve what the graduates have had for the past couple decades,” Elsen said.

This story was updated at 1:54 pm on Jun. 8, 2026.

On Jun. 8, Redwood High School principal Barnaby Payne sent an announcement to the Redwood community through StudentSquare to address class enrollment for the upcoming school year one day after the publishing of this article.

“Redwood has not implemented a new policy that restricts or caps the number of Advanced Placement (AP) or Honors courses a student can take. Second, I want to clarify a misunderstanding from an earlier communication: There is no policy that states students may only take five classes. Students may still take up to seven classes, depending on their selected courses,” Payne said in an email statement.

Payne is responding to misinterpretations of Administrative Regulation (AR) 6112. According to AR 6112, “ninth- and 10th-grade students shall be required to maintain at least a six-period schedule and 11th- and 12th-grade students shall be required to maintain a minimum of a five-course period schedule.”

Payne also explained that although the master schedule has been consolidated to meet reduced staffing requirements, the schedule still offers “high access,” “robust AP options,” “college prep coursework” and a “fair priority system.”

“Fewer total classes means our master schedules must be built much more tightly. When classes are tight, scheduling conflicts are harder to resolve, which is why some individual student schedules are facing adjustments. However, please know that the core of our academic program remains strong,” Payne said in an email statement.

Payne also addressed enrollment declines, less-than-anticipated revenue growth and the effects of these course consolidations on students’ college enrollment. According to Payne, there should be no adverse effects on students’ admissions to colleges.

“Rest assured, our official School Profile—which accompanies every single college application sent from Redwood—will explicitly and accurately reflect our scheduling structure and class realities so that no student is ever penalized by systemic scheduling constraints,” Payne said in an email statement. “We are incredibly proud of the rich academic and elective environment we maintain at Redwood. We are working around the clock to build a master schedule that honors our students’ passions while navigating these district-wide fiscal responsibilities.”