This post is for voters who want to understand what Measure H funds at the level of specific buildings, not aggregate budget lines. The contingency plan that triggers if Measure H fails twice closes two of four elementary schools.^[1] We’ve covered why that’s not the typical campaign closure threat. What we want to do here is walk the campuses one by one.

The five schools, plus a few honest words about each.

Brookside Elementary (San Anselmo)

Address: 116 Butterfield Road, San Anselmo Grades: TK–5 Enrollment: ~275 students

Brookside sits on Butterfield Road in lower San Anselmo. Per the district’s own demographic profile, Brookside is the most diverse RVSD school by family income and home language, and a frequent focus of district equity efforts. It’s also the home of RVSD’s K–2 and 3–5 Special Day Classes. Brookside’s enrollment math most directly intersects with concerns about how a closure decision would land — closures of high-need-population schools tend to face more scrutiny than closures of lower-need schools, and Brookside’s profile is the one most readers of this site should think about carefully.

What the parcel tax funds at Brookside: small-group reading instruction, math intervention specialists, English-language-development support, and the special-education coordination that connects services across the district. Tier 2 of the contingency plan (detailed in our No-trigger post) eliminates the special-education and ELD coordinator positions. Brookside’s program would be more directly affected than schools with smaller high-need populations.

Hidden Valley Elementary (San Anselmo)

Address: 46 Green Valley Court, San Anselmo Grades: TK–5 Enrollment: ~300 students

Tucked into the hills off Butterfield Road, Hidden Valley is Sleepy Hollow’s only neighborhood elementary. Strong reading and math results; close-knit parent community. GreatSchools rating: 9/10.

Walkability is meaningful for Hidden Valley families — the catchment is hilly but compact, and a substantial share of students walk or bike to school. A closure that absorbed Hidden Valley into one of the other elementaries would convert a walkable elementary into a drive-required one for many families.

Manor Elementary (Fairfax)

Address: 150 Oak Manor Drive, Fairfax Grades: TK–5 Enrollment: ~230 students (smallest of the four elementaries)

Manor is Fairfax’s neighborhood elementary, perched above Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It has the top GreatSchools rating in the district (10/10) and one of the highest in the county. Manor was the original home of the Multi-Age Program (MAP) that later became Ross Valley Charter School in 2017.^[2]

Manor’s role in Fairfax goes beyond academics. The school’s location in central Fairfax is part of why downtown Fairfax functions the way it does — the school playground is a Saturday morning destination, the school events draw the broader community, and Manor parents are anchor figures in many Fairfax civic groups. A closure of Manor would change Fairfax meaningfully, not just RVSD.

Wade Thomas Elementary (San Anselmo)

Address: 150 Ross Avenue, San Anselmo Grades: TK–5 Enrollment: ~315 students (largest of the four elementaries)

Wade Thomas anchors downtown San Anselmo on a site that has continuously housed a public school since 1898. Walkable from San Anselmo Avenue and many surrounding neighborhoods. GreatSchools rating: 9/10. As the largest of the four elementaries, Wade Thomas’s central location and capacity make it the natural absorption point for displaced students if Tier 3 closes a smaller campus — and a particularly disruptive closure target itself, because ~315 students would have to be redistributed across receiving schools.

The district has not published a list of which two elementaries would close under Tier 3, and the contingency plan doesn’t name specific schools. Smaller-enrollment elementaries are typically the first candidates considered in any school-district closure analysis, both because per-student fixed-cost overhead is highest at the smallest school and because consolidating its students into a neighboring elementary requires the smallest absorption capacity at the receiving school. That logic points away from Wade Thomas as a closure target, but it doesn’t rule one out — and either way, Wade Thomas is the campus whose enrollment composition changes most.

White Hill Middle School (Fairfax)

Address: 101 Glen Drive, Fairfax Grades: 6–8 Enrollment: ~628 students (district’s only middle school)

Every RVSD elementary student matriculates to White Hill. GreatSchools rating: 9/10. Strong electives program, music program, and athletics — all of which depend on the parcel tax to operate at their current scope.

Tier 1 of the contingency plan (already in motion regardless of Measure H) cuts $170,000 in stipends and additional staff hours at White Hill. Tier 2 (triggered if Measure H fails) cuts the second elective at White Hill — meaning a typical 6th, 7th, or 8th grader who currently takes both a music or art elective and a STEM/world-language elective would be reduced to one elective. That’s a meaningful program reduction.

White Hill is also home to Ross Valley Charter School (RVC) under Prop 39 facilities access — eight classrooms within the White Hill complex. The relationship has been complicated for nearly a decade, and any reconfiguration of White Hill in a Tier 3 scenario would intersect with the Prop 39 obligations.^[2]

What the closure math actually points at

The contingency plan’s Tier 3 is the closure of two of four elementaries. Per the enrollment math, with roughly 1,120 RVSD elementary students spread across the four campuses:

• Going from 4 elementaries to 3 puts each at ~375 — comfortably within typical capacity. One closure is the cleaner consolidation.
• Going from 4 to 2 puts each at ~560 — workable but at upper capacity, requiring real facility reconfiguration.

The “two closures” framing in the contingency plan is the documented worst case rather than the point estimate. In practice, a one-closure scenario is more defensible on the enrollment math, and a state administrator under receivership might choose differently than the local board would.

What we’re confident about: at least one elementary closure is realistic if Measure H fails twice. Which one would close is not publicly determined and would depend on geographic distribution of remaining enrollment, facility condition, and political process — including potential receivership, which removes some of those choices from local control.

Why this matters for your vote

When you vote on Measure H, you’re voting on whether to keep all five of these campuses operating as they are now, or to commit to a path that ends with two of them closing by August 2028.

We’ve made the broader budget and policy case throughout this site. What we want to add here is the simpler version: these are the schools. Brookside, Hidden Valley, Manor, Wade Thomas, White Hill. Real campuses, real kids walking through the doors every morning.

A Yes vote on Measure H keeps them. A No vote on June 2 puts that to November. A No on November 3, 2026 commits the district to closing two of them by August 2028.

Bottom line: looking school by school, we still believe Measure H should pass.

Sources

1. Marin IJ (Jan 31, 2026): "Ross Valley School District drafts $4.3M in budget cuts" — three-tier MCOE-required contingency plan (Tier 1 $170K → Tier 2 $1.04M → Tier 3 $3.1M with closure of two of four elementary schools); Graff's August 2028 "likely receivership" framing; positive → qualified → negative budget-status trajectory.
2. Ross Valley Charter — Our History — RVC's history including the Multi-Age Program origins at Manor Elementary, the 2015 charter petitions denied locally, and the January 2016 unanimous California State Board of Education approval.

← All posts