Officials at a California school district say their policy of keeping general obligation bond maturities shorter than most peers has saved local taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The tally from the San Juan Unified School District: $636 million saved over the past 12 years by opting for shorter-term debt.
The district says the average final term length for bonds its voters authorized in 2012 and 2016 has been 17.23 years to date.
Most bond programs are structured around a 30-year final maturity, but San Juan Unified has taken a different approach, because issuing debt at shorter maturities is more cost-efficient, said Brett Lee, a Raymond James managing director based in San Clemente, California. The firm has been an underwriter on recent San Juan Unified bond issues.
The eastern Sacramento County school district is the state's seventh largest with 51,289 students enrolled during the 2024-25 school year in 64 schools across a 75-square-mile region, according to California Department of Education data.
Its substantial assessed valuation allows the district to emphasize shorter-term maturities without trying to maximize its borrowing capacity, a departure from how many other districts operate, said Jason List of Isom Advisors, who works with nearly 200 school districts in California and is San Juan Unified's financial advisor.
This has dramatically lessened interest costs, improving the repayment ratio from a typical 2 to 1, meaning for every $1 borrowed the taxpayer pays $1 in interest through the life of the debt to a 1.36 ratio, in which taxpayers are paying $0.36 in interest for every $1 borrowed, Lee said.
The California Education Code does encourage restricting some debt types to maturities of no more than 20 years, said Adam Bauer, president and chief executive officer of Fieldman, Rolapp & Associates, a California municipal advisory firm that doesn't have San Juan Unified as a client.
But successfully issuing at shorter terms requires the district to have a high assessed valuation to make the structure work, Bauer said.
California school GOs are repaid using a voter-approved property tax levy.
A district's assessed valuation multiplied by its tax rate determines the dollar value available for bond repayment, he said.
If the AV is too small, the district would lack the necessary size to sell bonds or award contracts if it limited itself to the shorter maturity, Bauer said.
Frank Carmada, the school district's chief operations officer, has been focusing on restricting longer maturities for the past 12 years for debt issued off the district's 2012 $350 million Measure N and 2016 $750 million Measure P bond authorizations.
To date, the average final term length for Measure N and Measure P bonds has been 17.23 years, resulting in a combined repayment ratio of 1.36 to 1 meaning that the district taxpayers are paying only $0.36 in interest over every $1 borrowed, he said. Only $100 million remains unissued from those authorizations, according to the school district's most recent official statement in 2025.
"For a bond program of this size, shortening financing terms from 30 years down to 17 years has saved taxpayers approximately $636 million in interest over the life of the bonds," Carmada said.
The San Juan Unified approach deviates from the common strategy, which typically involves issuing 20- or 30-year bonds and later refinancing them to shorten the maturities, Bauer said. Some districts have talked about issuing shorter-term debt, but were hampered by the yield curve staying flat for a long period and the associated cost of issuance, he said.
The central philosophy of the bond program is to keep tax rates low and consistent for residents, Carmada said. The school district has received authorization from voters for large sums, but the strategy is to manage debt and allow older bonds to pay off, thereby avoiding "layering debt on top of debt" for taxpayers, he said.
For a property assessed at $500,000, the tax rate for 2025 to repay school bonds is projected to be $179.61 per $100,000 in assessed valuation, totaling $895, Carmada said. The bond program has been managed with the goal of not increasing the current tax rate.
What San Juan has done is to avoid maximizing what it could issue based on the AV, List said.
"They have taken their foot off the gas pedal to prioritize shorter-term financing," List said. "Since the assessed value is so big, they could do that and still meet the facilities needs."
Lee acknowledged maturities go out as far as 25 years
The decision on how long to structure each individual bond issuance was made at the time of each bond sale based on market conditions and assessed valuation growth information from the county, he said.
In recent years, Lee said, the school district structured its 2016 Measure P Bonds in anticipation of the $950 million Measure P bond authorization of 2024, "with the understanding that the taxpayers would be paying property taxes at rates no higher than what they have been paying in recent years. Because of that, the district opted to sell longer-dated bonds to better manage the short-term tax rate and ensure that the overall combined tax rate stayed in line with taxpayer expectations."
The district's AV increased 73% between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2025, reaching $48.95 billion, according to the 2025 official statement. The district's enrollment was fairly flat during that period, according to California
Judicious issuance through its bond program and strategic facility planning has helped buffer the district that serves the Sacramento suburbs from the challenges facing many public schools, including a trend of declining enrollment nationally, district officials said.
About 5.8 million students currently attend California's public schools, according to a January
The San Juan district hasn't experienced enrollment declines, but it has experienced flat growth, only adding 1,500 students over the last three years, Joel Ryan, the school district's chief financial officer said.
"We do predict declining enrollment in future years," Ryan said.
The school district is not without its challenges.
The school board voted in February to consider cutting up to 320 positions, comprising 118 teachers and counselors and 194 classified staff.
"We have a chunk of one-time funds expiring this year," Ryan said. "We have had to place positions on a layoff list. But it doesn't mean actual people will be laid off, because we have vacant positions. It's not related to the overall budget picture, but to one-time money that is expiring."
The district isn't in the position of some other districts, like Oakland School District, that have been contemplating closing schools.
"Our budget is stable," Carmada said. "We don't have to do that or consider consolidation."
The school district sold the last of its $350 million Measure N bonds in 2020 and is gearing up to sell the last of its $750 million 2016 Measure P bonds this summer, Carmada said..
Beyond its financial acuity, the school district is also celebrating recognition from the state architect for its data-driven facilities master plan.
The plan integrates multiple data sources to measure infrastructure needs including aging school districts, demographic analysis, enrollment projections, eligibility for state matching funds and an equity factor to address neighborhoods that have received less attention.
The master plan
The comprehensive use of data allows decisions to be made based on priority, rather than the "pressures of any one community or agenda," he said.
California school districts are also required to have a comprehensive master plan before they can qualify for matching state funds, so having a comprehensive plan means the school district has the capability to attract those funds.
Pointing to
