If you have a kid at Brookside Elementary School (or your child attends one of the district’s K–2 or 3–5 Special Day Classes housed at Brookside, or you’re a Butterfield Road neighbor), Measure H is on your June 2, 2026 ballot for one big reason: Brookside is the campus where RVSD’s most program-dependent students go to school, and Tier 2 of the contingency plan cuts those exact programs first.
This page is a Brookside-specific look at Measure H: what the parcel tax funds at Brookside, why a No vote affects Brookside differently from the other elementaries, and the case for Yes from a Brookside family’s perspective.
Our recommendation: Yes on Measure H. Brookside serves about 275 students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade at 116 Butterfield Road in San Anselmo, and is the home of RVSD’s K–2 and 3–5 Special Day Classes. It’s the campus most directly affected by Measure H’s Tier 2 cuts to special-education and English-language-development coordination if the measure fails. We recommend voting Yes on June 2, 2026.
A school built when San Anselmo was still finding itself
Brookside opened in 1946 as Lower Brookside, on the same Butterfield Road corridor where San Anselmo’s first schoolhouse had opened back in 1876. It was joined eleven years later by Upper Brookside in 1957 — the campus we now know as Hidden Valley Elementary in Sleepy Hollow. The two schools share that history; for a generation, they were two halves of the same school district expansion that built out San Anselmo’s hill neighborhoods.
Today’s Brookside is a single TK–5 campus, and it is the most diverse RVSD elementary by family income and home language. It is the district’s federal Title I targeted school, meaning federal funding flows specifically here for students from lower-income families. Parcel-tax revenue stacks on top of those federal dollars.
That diversity is also what makes Brookside the campus most affected by certain kinds of cuts. We come back to that below.
What’s at Brookside right now
A few things to ground the conversation in 2026 specifics:
- Enrollment: approximately 275 TK–5 students.
- Principal: Amanda Wagner. From the principal’s welcome message: “At Brookside, our dedicated teachers and staff are deeply committed to supporting every student academically, socially, and emotionally, so that each child can thrive and truly feel a sense of belonging.” That whole-child commitment framing runs through Brookside’s identity in a way that’s pronounced even relative to other RVSD schools.
- Special Day Classes. Brookside is home to RVSD’s K–2 Special Day Class and the 3–5 Special Day Class, plus a resource specialist and a school psychologist on site. This is where the district concentrates intensive special-education programming. It’s central to Brookside’s identity as the campus that takes the broadest cross-section of RVSD students.
- EL/Intervention. A dedicated EL/Intervention specialist is on staff. English-language development is a daily piece of the Brookside program.
- Specialists every student sees weekly: music (including orchestra), art, PE, and library, plus a school counselor and a school nurse.
- GreatSchools rating: 7/10. PublicSchoolReview ranks Brookside in the top 10% of California elementary schools for combined proficiency. The 7/10 GreatSchools number reflects, in part, the more diverse student body and the way GreatSchools weights its rating components — Brookside’s actual academic outcomes, especially in the SPED and EL populations it serves, are quite strong.
Why Brookside matters specifically for Measure H
The Tier 2 cuts in RVSD’s MCOE-required contingency plan fall most directly on the programs concentrated at Brookside. Per the plan:
Tier 2 (triggered if Measure H fails) cuts elementary PE; the second elective at White Hill; two coordinator positions in special education and English-language development; one instructional coach; three-day management furlough.[1]
Brookside is the campus where:
- The special education coordinator position that Tier 2 cuts has been most active. SPED coordination across the K–2 and 3–5 Special Day Classes is exactly what that role does. Cutting it means the on-the-ground coordination (IEP scheduling, service delivery, related-services logistics) gets thinner, even when special-education service delivery itself continues.
- The English-language-development coordinator position serves Brookside’s higher-share EL student population most directly. Eliminating it is felt at Brookside before it’s felt at the other elementaries.
- Elementary PE is taught for every Brookside student weekly. The Tier 2 cut to elementary PE means that goes away.
In other words: the abstract phrase “Tier 2 cuts” lands on a specific campus first, and it’s Brookside.
This is part of why we think the equity argument for Yes on H is especially strong at Brookside. [2]
The kids who lose the most when Tier 2 hits are concentrated at the campus that enrolls the highest share of EL students and SPED students.
What Measure H specifically funds at Brookside
Measure H is a qualified special tax — the ballot text legally restricts spending to attracting and retaining qualified teachers, maintaining STEM/reading/writing programs, and keeping class sizes manageable, and prohibits spending on administrator salaries.[3]
Translated to a TK–5 campus the size and character of Brookside:
- Classroom teacher compensation. RVSD competes with Mill Valley ($1,520 parcel tax), Kentfield ($1,842), and Ross ($1,644) for teacher hires.[4] Each of those neighboring districts is a basic-aid district with substantially higher per-pupil revenue. Without the Measure H parcel tax, RVSD loses its already-thin ability to keep compensation in the same ZIP code as its neighbors.
- Classroom-teacher staffing for the K–2 and 3–5 Special Day Classes. The general-fund support for these classrooms (beyond what federal IDEA and state SPED funds cover) relies on parcel-tax revenue. Cutting that revenue means cutting class-size protection in the very classrooms that need the smallest ratios.
- EL/Intervention services. The on-site EL/Intervention specialist role and the district-level coordination it depends on rely on parcel-tax support for the wraparound piece.
- Music, art, PE, library as weekly classes.
What happens to Brookside if Measure H fails
We’ve sketched this above; the short version:
- Tier 1 (already in motion regardless of how Measure H goes): $170K in stipend cuts at White Hill. No layoffs. Brookside is not directly affected.[1]
- Tier 2 (Measure H fails June): $1.04M in cuts hitting the programs most concentrated at Brookside, as detailed above.
- Tier 3 (Measure H fails June and November): $3.1M in cuts including closure of two of four elementary schools and grade-level reconfiguration of the remaining schools, by August 2028.[1]
Whether Brookside itself would be one of the two closed schools is not publicly determined; the district has deliberately not named specific campuses. But Brookside’s role as the home of the Special Day Classes and as the Title I targeted campus is one of several factors that make a Brookside closure relatively less likely than closure of smaller, less program-anchored elementaries — closing Brookside would require moving the Special Day Classes somewhere, which is a more complex consolidation than relocating a typical TK–5 class.
But that observation isn’t reassuring on its own. Tier 2 cuts hit Brookside whether or not Brookside itself closes. And Tier 3 reconfiguration would change Brookside’s enrollment composition, class sizes, and program structure substantially even if its building stays open.
What Yes on Measure H would do for Brookside
The opposite picture, concretely:
- The Special Day Classes keep their support. SPED coordination and related-services logistics stay funded.
- EL/Intervention services hold. The on-site specialist role and the district-level coordination it depends on remain.
- Elementary PE stays. Every Brookside student keeps weekly PE with the on-site PE staff.
- Class sizes hold — including in the SPED classrooms where small ratios matter most.
- The campus stays open. Brookside continues as the campus that takes the broadest cross-section of RVSD students.
We’ve made the broader case for Yes in our main case-for-Yes page: RVSD ranks 959th of 995 California districts on per-pupil state funding,[5] and at $1,282 the proposed parcel tax would still be the lowest among Marin K-8 districts.[4] The Brookside-specific point is just this: the kids who depend most on RVSD’s programs are at Brookside, and Measure H is what those programs run on.
Where we land
Brookside is the campus where Tier 2 cuts to RVSD’s special-education and English-language coordination land hardest — that’s where the K–2 and 3–5 Special Day Classes, the Title I designation, and the highest share of EL students all live. A Yes vote on Measure H keeps the on-the-ground coordination that makes those programs work; a No vote thins them first.
For these reasons, we recommend voting Yes on Measure H on June 2.
How to vote
Election Day is Tuesday, June 2, 2026. Marin County mails ballots to every registered voter in early May. You can:
- Return your ballot by mail (postmarked by June 2)
- Drop it in any Marin County drop box (closest to Brookside is at San Anselmo Town Hall on Tunstead Avenue)
- Vote in person at the San Anselmo polling location
Full deadlines and drop-box locations are at the Marin County Elections Department. Homeowners 65+ are exempt from the parcel tax — the exemption form is on the RVSD site, and existing exemptees do not need to reapply.