Statewide Analysis of Bond Funding

Overview:  According to the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools, California’s K–12 facility inventory is large (totaling 730 million square feet) and is aging. (Estimates show that 40% of the inventory is more than 50 years old.) School construction and maintenance are funded mainly by state and local General Obligation (GO) bonds. Additionally, parcel taxes are fixed charges imposed on each real estate parcel (regardless of its assessed value), with resulting funds directed to the local school district's general fund to support ongoing operational costs. These indicators focus on local school construction bond measures and parcel taxes that are used by schools and communities to finance major construction and renovation of school buildings and grounds. Bond measures that have been passed in recent years are subject to compliance with CALGreen sustainability construction and renovation codes. Source: Ed-Data 

The map below shows which districts have pass bonds since 2010, with darker shades of green indicating more bonds being passed. The filters to the right of the map can be used to narrow down the data based on different variables. Districts who do not match the criteria of the filter will turn grey. Hovering over the district will provide detailed information for that district. 

*Note: The visualization and filters may have formatting issues when using smaller screens, such as cell phones.

1. 588 districts have passed at least one bond or parcel tax since 2010 totaling over $132,000,000,00

2. LAUSD alone passed $16,000,000,000 in bonds (this factors out to about $15,000,000 per school site if distributed evenly.

3. More research is needed to determine how the bond funding was distributed and utilized. 

Ten Strands would like to thank the following contributors to this project:

• Data Analysts Interns: UC Berkeley Data Discovery Intern Teams

  • Spring 2026: Jason Chang, Jeremy Kemmerer, Kelly Le, Natasha Gill