If you have a kid at Manor Elementary School (or you’re a Fairfax neighbor whose Saturday morning includes the Manor playground at some point), Measure H is on your June 2, 2026 ballot for one big reason: Manor is the only RVSD elementary school in Fairfax, and it anchors a community that’s larger than the school itself.
This page is a Manor-specific look at Measure H: what the parcel tax funds at Manor, why a strong Manor matters for Fairfax beyond just the families currently enrolled, and the case for voting Yes.
Our recommendation: Yes on Measure H. Manor serves about 230 students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade at 150 Oak Manor Drive in Fairfax, perched above Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It carries the highest GreatSchools rating in RVSD (10/10) and is Fairfax’s only RVSD elementary. Without Measure H, the district’s contingency plan calls for closing two of four elementary schools by August 2028, and Fairfax loses its neighborhood elementary if Manor is one of them. We recommend voting Yes on June 2, 2026.
The Fairfax neighborhood elementary
Manor opened on its current site in 1980 as part of RVSD’s consolidated district configuration, but the campus reflects a longer arc of Fairfax public education going back to 1876, when residents of Fairfax were granted their own school district. Manor sits at the north end of town in the Oak Manor neighborhood, named for the oaks that still shade the playground.
Manor’s role in Fairfax extends well past its 230-student enrollment:
- The playground is a Saturday institution. Walk across the field on any sunny weekend and you’ll find a mix of current Manor families, Manor alumni, and younger siblings on the climbing structure. The PTA’s annual events draw the broader Fairfax community.
- Manor parents anchor Fairfax civic life. Town Council meetings, the Fairfax Festival, the parade — Manor parents are often the through-line.
- It’s the neighborhood school, full stop. Most Fairfax kids who attend RVSD schools attend Manor. If Manor closes, “the Fairfax elementary” stops existing in any practical sense.
What’s at Manor right now
A few things to ground the conversation in the school as it actually is in 2026:
- Enrollment: approximately 230 TK–5 students. Manor’s enrollment has declined from roughly 390 in 2015 to 230 today, a drop that follows the broader RVSD trajectory across all four elementaries.
- Principal: Peg Minicozzi, who has led Manor since August 2014 — more than 11 years and counting. Before Manor, Peg was principal at Park Elementary in Mill Valley for nearly eight years and assistant principal in Great Neck, NY. She holds a master’s in Educational Leadership from UC Berkeley. Continuity of school leadership is one of the underrated reasons Manor has stayed high-performing through district turbulence.
- GreatSchools rating: 10/10. The highest in RVSD and one of the highest of any school in Marin County.
- Specialists every student sees weekly: music, art, PE, library, technology — all funded in part by the parcel tax that Measure H renews.
A bit of Manor history that matters for this conversation
Manor is also the original home of the Multi-Age Program (MAP), an in-district Reggio-Emilia-inspired program founded at Manor in 1996 that ran for 18 years before its parents and teachers eventually filed to spin it off as a charter school in 2015.[1] That charter (Ross Valley Charter School, or RVC) was denied locally, denied at the county level, and ultimately approved by the California State Board of Education in January 2016, opening at White Hill in fall 2017.
Manor’s history is part of why RVSD’s financial picture is harder than a typical small district’s.[2] The roughly $468,000 per year that RVSD transfers to RVC in in-lieu property taxes (about half of which goes to subsidize charter students who don’t even live in RVSD) is one of the structural pressures Measure H is trying to compensate for.[3] Manor parents in particular have lived through that era; many are still sorting out their feelings about it. None of that is a reason to vote No on Measure H. The structural transfer continues regardless of how this election goes; the question Measure H asks is whether Manor’s remaining 230 kids get the staffing they need.
What Measure H specifically funds at Manor
Measure H is a qualified special tax: the ballot text restricts spending to three categories — attracting and retaining qualified teachers; maintaining STEM, reading, and writing programs; and keeping class sizes manageable. The ballot text prohibits spending on administrator salaries.[4]
Translated to a TK–5 campus the size of Manor, that means parcel-tax dollars pay for:
- Classroom teacher compensation. Manor runs roughly one section per grade (with some grades doubled depending on cohort size). Each classroom teacher’s salary is what the district most directly competes for against neighboring basic-aid districts that pay significantly more.[5] RVSD teachers received no salary increase this year, not even a cost-of-living adjustment, because the district couldn’t afford one.[6]
- Pull-out reading and math intervention for students who need it.
- Music, art, PE, and library specialists as weekly classes.
About 16% of RVSD’s general fund is parcel-tax revenue,[3] and Measure H renews that share — adding a structural $540 increase to close the gap between the existing levy and what the district actually needs.
What happens to Manor if Measure H fails
Two scenarios, both grim, in increasing severity:
Scenario 1: Measure H fails June 2 but passes November 3. Tier 2 of the contingency plan kicks in for FY 2027-28: $1.04M in cuts including elementary PE, the second elective at White Hill, two coordinator positions in special education and English-language development, and one instructional coach.[7] At Manor, that means the elementary PE specialist your kid sees every week probably goes away, the SPED/ELD coordination that supports Manor’s higher-need students gets thinner, and the school year starts August 2027 with measurably fewer adults in the building.
Scenario 2: Measure H fails twice (June and November). Tier 3 triggers: $3.1M in cuts for FY 2028-29 including closure of two of four elementary schools and grade-level reconfiguration of the remaining schools, with the closures effective by August 2028.[7] The district has not named which two would close. But Fairfax has only one RVSD elementary: Manor. If Manor is one of the two that closes, Fairfax loses its neighborhood elementary entirely. If it’s not, Manor’s enrollment likely doubles overnight as displaced kids from San Anselmo or Sleepy Hollow are absorbed.
Either Tier 3 outcome is bad for Manor families. Closure means students and teachers move; consolidation means much larger class sizes, a different building feel, and the loss of the small-school identity that has made Manor a 10/10. The closure conversation is the county-required Tier 3 of RVSD’s documented contingency plan, written down on the public record.
[7]What Yes on Measure H would do for Manor
The opposite picture, concretely:
- Continuity of leadership and staffing. Peg’s 12th year at the helm; teachers retained.
- Class sizes hold at current levels — generally 18–22 in the primary grades, larger in upper elementary.
- Specialists stay. Music, art, PE, library, intervention.
- Manor stays open. Fairfax keeps its neighborhood elementary.
- Teacher compensation has room to recover across the 10-year term of the levy, after this year’s no-raise contract.
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,[8] and even at $1,282 the proposed parcel tax would be the lowest among Marin K-8 districts.[5] The Manor-specific point is just this: Fairfax has one neighborhood elementary, and Measure H is what keeps it.
Where we land
Fairfax has one neighborhood RVSD elementary, and the structural pressures on Manor’s budget — the in-lieu transfer to Ross Valley Charter, basic-aid oscillation, and a decade of declining enrollment — don’t go away if Measure H fails. A Yes vote keeps Manor open with its current staffing; a No vote on both June 2 and November 3, 2026 puts Fairfax’s only RVSD elementary on the closure list MCOE has required RVSD to file.
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 Manor is at Fairfax Town Hall on Bolinas Road)
- Vote in person at the Fairfax 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.