Marin Schools

School Ratings & Information for Marin County School Districts including Sausalito, Corte Madera, and Mill Valley

Read how Marin County public schools and school districts are rated on the California Academic Performance Index (API), an aggregate ratings indicator of how well schools and districts perform on the following tests:

Base reports were published for the 2007 school year. Updates for 2008 and Growth Reports are available at the California Department of Education web site.

School District Information for each Marin County City

City School District
Bodega Shoreline Unified School District
Corte Madera Larkspur School District
Fairfax Ross Valley School District
Forest Knolls Lagunitas School District
Greenbrae Kentfield School District
Inverness Shoreline Unified School District
Kentfield Kentfield School District
Lagunitas Lagunitas School District
Larkspur Larkspur School District
Mill Valley Mill Valley School District
Novato Novato Unified School District
Point Reyes Shoreline Unified School District
Ross Ross School District
San Anselmo Ross Valley School District
San Geronimo Lagunitas School District
San Rafael San Rafael School District, Dixie School District*
Sausalito Sausalito Marin City School District
Tiburon Reed Union School District
Tomales Shoreline Unified School District
Woodacre Lagunitas School District

* Note: The Dixie Schoold District is comprised of three elementary schools that serve Terra Linda, Marinwood, Lucas Valley, and a portion of Contempo Marin (manufactured home community). For the location of this district within San Rafael, please refer to the district map.
Marin County School Information - Belvedere, Tiburon, Corte Madera, Kentfield, Larkspur, Fairfax, Greenbrae, Mill Valley, Novato, Ross, San Anselmo, San Rafael, Sausalito, West Marin Marin County School Information - Belvedere, Tiburon, Corte Madera, Kentfield, Larkspur, Fairfax, Greenbrae, Mill Valley, Novato, Ross, San Anselmo, San Rafael, Sausalito, West Marin

Marin County High Schools
Marin high schools often serve more than one city. Here is a summary, with links, to each Marin school web site.

Marin Offers Outstanding Private Schools
Though most Marin County Public Schools are considered on a par with private schools, Marin offers many fine private schools.

Excellent Marin Schools Attract Buyers
The best public schools in Marin continue to attract home buyers who are willing to pay 25-50% more for houses in cities like Corte Madera, Larkspur, Tiburon, or Kentfield. Jeremy Schnitker explains the state of affairs in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 28, 2010. Parents pay plenty to get kids into better schools:

Richard Clements pays 25 percent more in rent so he can send his daughter to schools in Larkspur.

Keith Roberts is ready to buy a home in the Piedmont School District, when he could purchase a virtually identical one for $500,000 less just a few blocks away. Real estate agent Matt Heafey enjoyed living in Oakland but was quick to flee for the pricier environs of Piedmont a decade and a half ago when it was time for his youngest child to start elementary school.

They're all happy to ante up the "school district premium," or the extra price a homeowner pays solely to be within the boundaries of a distinguished public school district.

Most Bay Area residents know the districts most in demand: Communities like Piedmont, Tiburon, Orinda and Palo Alto attract their fair share of buyers most covetous of their schools. And they're glad to pay up.

What exactly is the school district premium? Some agents believe it's 10 to 25 percent of a home's sale or rental price.

Both Roberts and Heafey agree it's at least $500,000 more to buy a three- or four-bedroom home in Piedmont than it is to buy a comparable home in Oakland's well-regarded, adjacent Rockridge neighborhood, if only because of Piedmont's superior school district. Clements, who recently moved out of San Anselmo and the San Rafael School District, says he's paying a healthy chunk of additional rent to be farther south in Corte Madera, served by Larkspur schools.

McGuire Real Estate agent Roger Zipkin, who works out of the company's Mill Valley office, recently sold a home in San Rafael for $1.8 million. He said had that property been just a little bit south in Greenbrae, which is in the Kentfield School District, it could have gone for $2.5 million.

Not trivial.

"Some of the houses around here (in southern Marin County) are at a 50 to 60 percent premium" to those in northern Marin because of their schools, Clements said. For some, the premium is well worth it given the alternative. It takes luck and perseverance to gain entry to the handful of highest-quality city public schools in San Francisco and Oakland. And many Bay Area private schools are vaunted, but they don't come free.

Roberts said he couldn't continue paying to send his three kids to private school in San Francisco, where tuition ranges to $25,000 per year for elementary school and as much as $40,000 per year for high school.

Others, like Clements, wanted to be in a better elementary district that would funnel his young daughter to better middle and high schools when she got to that age. Roberts, who recently sold a home in the Dolores Heights neighborhood of San Francisco and is looking to buy in Piedmont, started sending his two youngest daughters to public elementary schools in San Francisco. But he doesn't want to send them to middle or high school in the city, and considering he already has a son in a private middle school, he can't justify spending any more on private tuition.

"The high school process in San Francisco is really onerous - it's like applying for colleges," Roberts said. "To send all three of my kids to private school here, we're looking at $100,000 a year in pre-tax income.

The other thing that kills you is you're paying over $20,000 in property taxes in San Francisco for schools you may not even be using. But you can go over to Piedmont, where property taxes are only slightly higher, and you're going to really good public schools that you're happy about."

Schools sustain value.

The school district premium is certainly noticeable in the purchase price of a home, but it may really pay off when it comes time to sell. Since there's a steady stream of school-hunters looking to move to these communities, their homes tend to sustain their value.

"I think it adds more to the resale value than anything else," Heafey said. "When the markets got hit a couple years ago, these markets didn't get hit as badly because people are always interested in getting into these school systems."

Zipkin said since a lot of private financial effort goes into maintaining the schools in these districts - often through school fundraisers - people know they will continue to maintain their reputation.

"So you're going to have greater liquidity and potentially earlier appreciation in these areas because of that," he said.

Zipkin also sees people moving into these districts - as opposed to sending their kids to private school - as a way to perhaps invest the money they would otherwise be spending on private school tuition in real estate instead.

"You've got people who are sending their kids to private school to the tune of $40,000 a year, and now they're saying, 'wait a minute, we lost a good chunk of our portfolio a couple years ago, maybe we're better off putting that money into real estate while the market is low, and we can watch our portfolios grow again,'" he said. Zipkin, who does not have any children, admits that when it comes to this big of an investment, "people are usually more willing to give up something on the property end before they are the school district."

Here are web sites that provide detailed information about schools:

Overview of Marin County schools by the Marin County Office of Education

The California Department of Education web site - You will find the API reports for all Marin schools and how they rank state-wide.

If the house you want to buy is near a border between two towns, we can confirm the school district for you and the choices that you may have.

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