Starting with the 2026-2027 school year, the San Rafael City Schools district is planning on making cuts totaling around $1.5 million from the budgets of the high schools within the district. The cuts will impact Terra Linda High School, San Rafael High School, and Madrone High School. However, since Madrone is a campus serving approximately 50 students, the majority of the cuts will fall on Terra Linda and San Rafael.
The decreased district funding comes from a variety of factors, Terra Linda principal Katy Dunlap said. One main reason is a decrease in the number of enrolled students in the district. “We have declining enrollment throughout different places in California, but definitely here in our district,” said Dunlap. “Our enrollment has declined by at least 100 students.” With this decreased enrollment comes the need to cut teachers to supplement the loss in funding.
Another component stems from the COVID funding given to schools during the pandemic that has recently “expired,” said Dunlap. In 2020-2021, California schools received a historical amount of COVID-19 recovery funding, with a total of around $23.4 billion given to help schools navigate the pandemic and safely reopen. These funds were liquidated by early 2025, meaning schools could no longer take advantage of the relief funding by this point. Also contributing to the decline in funding is a decrease in the money allotted by the federal government. Dunlap noted that this amount has “seen some shifts with our current [presidential] administration.” The funding cuts in the district are a result of the combination of these elements.
The budget cuts will manifest themselves in several ways in the coming years, but the most immediate one for Terra Linda next year will be program losses. “The big thing you’ll notice is a decrease in the programs we’re able to offer,” said Morgan Agnew, TL math teacher and the union president for the high schools within the SRCS district. “Bigger schools can offer more classes than smaller schools. We’re becoming smaller, so we’ll have less classes we can offer.”
At TL, the cuts will result in changes to school programs with small class sizes, including the music and French programs.. For the 2026-2027 school year, Terra Linda will have two fewer periods of music, meaning that the music teaching position will go from full time to 60%. The French language pathway, on the other hand, will be completely removed, as announced by the school earlier this year. However, to support the phasing out of French, Dunlap is enthusiastic about a potential partnership with College of Marin, which could offer one advanced French course to students.
For now, the removal of the French program and cuts to the music program are enough to supplement the decrease in funding. But if these district cuts continue, more changes will have to be made. “As we begin to make cuts, you want to keep them as far away from the classroom as you can,” said Dunlap. “If we had to go further, then we would see some real effects.” Regardless of this, Dunlap is not too worried about the future of Terra Linda. As an administrator who has been in education for 25 years, Dunlap has experience with budget changes. “I’ve seen the budget high and low, and bounce back every time.” she said. “That’s why I’m not sitting here freaked out, because I always see it rebound.”
Although the removal of some key programs will be difficult for Terra Linda and its students, Agnew believes the cuts are needed. “We’re losing enrollment, and that has decreased the funding we get from the state. And other costs, like electricity and insurance, are going up, and they’re going up faster than our funding increases.” he said. “All those do necessitate some cuts, and it’s painful, but it is necessary.” Although the Trojan community will miss both the extra music courses and the French program, ultimately these losses have allowed the school to take the decreased district funding in stride.
