![\"100](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-133295712,imgsize-210115,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\nTeachers at a California public school got their \u2018life-changing\u2019 bonuses this week after a woman donated $1 million. On Thursday, August 13, one hundred teachers in the Bay Area\u2019s Ross Valley School District, located in the wealthy Northern California county of Marin, were asked to gather for a quick meeting. Once they entered the conference room, a woman stood up and directed the principals in attendance to hand out envelopes to each teacher. Having no clue what was happening, the teachers opened the envelopes and were surprised. Each envelope contained a cheque for $9,161.70. Now, that\u2019s what you call the bonus of a lifetime!<\/p>\n Maja Kristin, a local resident, made a $1 million donation to the district\u2019s teachers, according to KRON4. The money was split evenly among every educator in the district. Her donation came as a surprise. There was no press release, no introduction. She simply walked into that room to say: I see you, and what you\u2019re being paid is wrong. \u201cWe as citizens, we can write direct checks,\u201d Kristin told the assembled teachers, instructing them to open their envelopes. She made the donation after being upset over the \u2018injustice\u2019 of Marin County\u2019s public school funding.Marin County was earlier ranked the 10th wealthiest county in the United States. San Anselmo and Fairfax, the communities served by Ross Valley, sit in the rolling hills north of San Francisco, where property values have climbed steadily for decades. Yet somewhere along the way, the district\u2019s funding hadn\u2019t kept pace. Kristin decided to make the donation after she learned that Ross Valley was in the bottom 4% for funding in California and that the teachers were paid the lowest in Marin County.\u201cThe property values are really high in our district, but the property, the assessed value, is really low because people move here and they stay here,\u201d Tyler Graff, Ross Valley\u2019s superintendent, told the outlet.\u201cSo Prop 13 has kept our tax base quite low compared to other Marin districts,\u201d he added. The California tax rule caps property tax at 1% of a property\u2019s assessed value.<\/p>\n For the teachers, the bonus was more than what they could ever ask for. The best part about it? It came out of the blue. A true surprise. The teachers expressed that they \u201ccouldn\u2019t be more grateful\u201d for the donation.\u201cIt\u2019s life-changing,\u201d Sydney Dean, a teacher, said.\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever experienced such a beautiful gift from someone I don\u2019t even know or haven\u2019t taught their kid,\u201d Amber Bunnell-Wild added.Prior to the meeting, the teachers also shared their personal stories and how the money could aid them.\u201cI have three kids, and there\u2019s lots of activities that they want to do that we can\u2019t always afford to pay for because of my salary. And it\u2019s with this kind of money that there are things I can say yes to that they want to do, so it\u2019s really exciting and huge for our family,\u201d teacher Anna Schnell told the outlet.\u201cThis feels great to have people right here in the community wanting to support public education and public educators,\u201d Eric Brandt said.Kristin hopes that her actions will inspire other Marin residents to step forward. \u201cMy hope was that folks like you would be here, and word would get out, and Marin residents who value public education would step forward one way or another, whether it\u2019s a direct gift or a political act, or a foundation pool,\u201d she told the outlet.<\/div>\n Teachers at a California public school got their \u2018life-changing\u2019 bonuses this week after a woman donated $1 million. On Thursday, August 13, one hundred teachers in the Bay Area\u2019s Ross Valley School District, located in the wealthy Northern California county of Marin, were asked to gather for a quick meeting. Once they entered the conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-31"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-small":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-small-tall":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-small-square":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-small-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-medium-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg","blogsy-wide":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Teachers at a California public school got their \u2018life-changing\u2019 bonuses this week after a woman donated $1 million. On Thursday, August 13, one hundred teachers in the Bay Area\u2019s Ross Valley School District, located in the wealthy Northern California county of Marin, were asked to gather for a quick meeting. Once they entered the conference […]","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":1,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg",400,225,false],"medium":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg",300,169,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg",150,84,false]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/author\/admin"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}$1 million for the teachers<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"Teachers](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/msid-133295674\/teachers-had-no-idea-what-the-agenda-of-the-meeting-was.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\nA \u2018life-changing\u2019 bonus<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/msid-133295712\/woman-write-a-1m-cheque-for-the-school.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"