May 6, 2026

Where the $8.6 million actually goes

A general tax goes into the general fund and the legislative body decides what to do with it. A special tax — which is what Measure H is — has legally restricted uses written into the ballot text itself. Voters approve the tax knowing what it can and can’t be spent on, and the restriction is enforceable.

So: what is the $8.6 million per year actually allowed to fund, and what’s it barred from funding?

What Measure H permits

Per the official ballot question on Ballotpedia, Measure H authorizes spending on three categories:^[1]

Attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers
Maintaining science, technology, engineering, math (STEM), reading, and writing programs
Maintaining manageable class sizes

That’s the whole permitted-uses list. It’s narrower than most parcel taxes, by design.

Any spending of Measure H funds outside these three categories would be a violation of the measure’s terms — challengeable in court, and reviewable annually by an independent citizens’ oversight committee.^[1]

What Measure H explicitly bars

The ballot text also explicitly bars two specific spending categories:

No funds for administrators (administrator salaries are excluded by ballot text)
No funds for pensions

Both have been raised by Measure H opponents as concerns about how parcel-tax money flows through district budgets.^[2] The legal restriction on those line items is in the measure itself, not just in district policy.

The ballot text also includes:

Senior exemptions — homeowners 65+, plus residents on SSI or SSDI, can opt out
3% annual cost-of-living adjustment — not a 5% adjustment like Mill Valley or Larkspur-Corte Madera
Independent citizens’ oversight committee with annual public expenditure review
All funds stay local — Sacramento can’t divert the revenue

What this means in dollar terms

RVSD’s adopted 2025-26 budget shows total general-fund revenues of $29,774,385, with the existing $742 parcel tax supplying 16.2% — about $4.8M per year.^[3]

Measure H is designed to raise ~$8.6M per year initially (it grows with the 3% escalator). So Measure H replaces the existing $4.8M and adds approximately $3.8M per year in new revenue in the early years.

Where does that ~$3.8M of new revenue go? The district hasn’t published a line-item allocation, but the public record gives a strong indication:

About $3M is what the district has identified as needed to close the structural deficit and catch up on teacher compensation. RVSD deficit-spent ~$2.6M in FY 2024-25 and is projected to deficit-spend ~$3M in FY 2025-26.^[4] That’s the gap that has to be closed first; it’s also what’s been forcing the district’s reserves down from 7.3% toward the 3% state minimum.
The remainder buffers the district against the year-to-year flip between LCFF and basic-aid status — see our post on the basic-aid oscillation — and against revenue shocks like the post-COVID ADA-to-enrollment-ratio drop that has cost the district roughly $600,000–$800,000 in lost annual base-grant revenue.^[3]

The teacher-pay piece, specifically

The single largest practical impact of the new revenue is teacher compensation. RVSD pay sits at the bottom of Marin K-8 districts. Teachers received no salary increase this year — not even a cost-of-living adjustment — because the district couldn’t afford one.^[5]

Per Pete Santucci, a 20-year RVSD music teacher who signed the Argument in Favor: “I have seen first-hand how difficult it is to hire and retain excellent teachers because of the district’s low level of funding from the state… If that local funding expires, the cuts to our programs will be catastrophic for the education of our students.”^[5]

A meaningful share of Measure H’s new revenue will go to bringing teacher compensation back into a competitive range. The ballot language permits exactly this — “attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers” is the first authorized use — and the contingency plan for a No vote includes Tier 2 cuts that would push pay competitiveness even further behind, plus a Tier 2 management furlough.^[4]

On the “fungibility” critique

A more sophisticated opposition argument is fungibility: even if Measure H bars its funds from administrator salaries and pensions, the district’s existing general-fund money continues to pay those line items. New parcel-tax money for teachers frees up general-fund money that can flow elsewhere. Critics argue the legal restriction is a labeling exercise that doesn’t constrain the overall spending mix.^[2]

Here’s why we don’t find that argument persuasive in this case:

The fungibility critique applies to every restricted-purpose tax in the country — including ones the same critics support. It would invalidate library parcel taxes, fire district parcel taxes, transportation sales taxes, and most school bonds. Selectively applying it only to Measure H is not principled.
California public-pension structure is set by CalSTRS and CalPERS, not by RVSD’s board. Local school boards don’t have authority to adjust pension contribution rates; those rates are set in statute. So the implicit ask — “reform pensions before we approve more parcel-tax money” — isn’t actually within the district’s power to deliver, even if the board wanted to.
RVSD pay is already among the lowest in Marin — see Santucci above. The district isn’t excess-compensating administrators or staff; it’s failing to pay them competitively. The fungibility concern would matter more if RVSD compensation were high. It isn’t.
The independent oversight committee publishes annual expenditure reviews. If the parcel-tax money is being shifted around in ways inconsistent with the ballot text, the committee will say so, in writing, in public.

On “the district doesn’t say where the money goes”

Some critics have noted that RVSD hasn’t published a detailed line-item spending plan allocating the $8.6M across the three permitted categories. That’s true — and it’s typical of parcel-tax measures, which are written to give the board flexibility to respond to year-to-year cost pressures within the legal restrictions.

It’s the same approach Mill Valley, Kentfield, Reed Union, Tamalpais Union, and other Marin districts have used in their own parcel-tax measures.^[6] The accountability mechanism is the oversight committee plus annual budget transparency, not a frozen pre-allocated line-item plan written into ballot text. Pre-allocating fixed dollar amounts to each category would make the funding less responsive to actual operating needs and would be unusual among Marin parcel-tax measures.

If the budget priorities published by the district shift dramatically away from teacher retention, class size, and STEM/literacy programs, that would be a problem worth raising at a board meeting and with the oversight committee. That isn’t what the public record suggests is happening.

Our read

Measure H is a more restricted parcel tax than most. The legal restrictions on administrator and pension spending are in the measure itself. The independent oversight committee is required, not optional. The use categories are narrowly tied to instruction.

What the $8.6M will fund, in practice, is what the ballot text describes: keeping teachers, keeping class sizes manageable, and keeping core academic programs. There is no mystery here.

That’s why we recommend a Yes vote on Measure H.

Sources

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