WHY GIVING MATTERS

The Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation (MPAEF) is a non-profit community organization dedicated to closing the gap between an increasingly expensive high-quality education and existing public funding.

Following the enactment of Proposition 13 in 1976, funding for California public schools was severely impacted.  In most cases, local property taxes, a stable source of all school revenue, were dramatically reduced.  Two type of school classifications resulted from this funding reduction: Basic Aid and Revenue Limited.  Revenue Limited districts do not raise enough taxes locally to meet the state minimums and therefore receive funding from the state based on the number of students enrolled.   Basic Aid districts (like Menlo Park) are perceived to have enough local tax revenue to meet minimum school funding and so get little or no state funding. 

Our school needs must be funded primarily by local taxes and organizations like the Foundation. As enrollment grows, as it has been the trend for the last 5 years, we receive no automatic increase in revenue.  Today property taxes contribute only 64 cents of every dollar we spend on our local schools.  The other third of the money we need is provided through parcel taxes, bond measures and grants from the Foundation.