School bonds were a tough sell to Bay Area voters this election - why was this one a slam dunk?

While declining enrollment has forced districts across the state to downsize, layoff staff or close schools, one Bay Area school faced a unique crisis this election season: too many students and not enough space.

It seems to have struck a chord with voters, as Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto’s Measure A, which asked voters to approve a $70 million school bond that will tax property owners through 2053, sailed out to an early lead on election night and appears to be running far ahead of the 55% of votes necessary to pass.

The bond will go to build new classrooms in anticipation of a 20% enrollment surge after the tuition-free private school founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, The Primary School, closes later this month.

This district has said it’s expecting to receive many of the 443 children enrolled at the Primary School’s East Palo Alto campus, which offers preschool through sixth grade and serves students from predominantly low-income communities. District officials said many of those students are former Ravenswood City School District students.

Ravenswood City School District Board of Education Trustee Jenny Bloom said the sudden closure presented immediate and unexpected problems for the district.

“We were projecting decreases just like school districts all over the state and in the country,” she said. “(Now) we’re accepting a whole school of students back into our district that we were not expecting to welcome back.”

District leaders said Ravenswood City’s aging facilities and current buildings are not prepared to hold the influx of new students from The Primary School. Without the funds, students would likely be placed in portable, temporary classrooms.

“We are fighting a perception that our community has about its own public school system. And perception goes a long way,” said the district’s superintendent, Gina Sudaria. “Having portables doesn’t give the impression that we are taking care of our students, not only on the outside, but also the instruction on the inside. And we’re doing both in Ravenswood.”

While more than 100,000 ballots still need to be processed, early returns revealed Measure A is passing with 66% of the vote as of Friday.

“The bond measure passing is a big relief,” Bloom said. “We still have a lot of things that we need to make sure that we’re doing well. But now it’s not this crisis of trying to figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together.”

Ravenswood City School District was one of more than a dozen Bay Area districts with school bonds and tax measures on the June 2 ballot. But Measure A’s easy win was in stark contrast to the majority of the more than $688 million in local funding measures put before voters — many of which are currently trailing the threshold needed to pass.

Historically, California voters have tended to be highly receptive to school bond measures, said Julian Lafortune, a senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Public Policy Institute of California.

Voters passed 205 of 267 proposed local school construction bonds on the Nov. 2024 ballot — about a 77% passage rate compared to the historic 79% approval rate since 2000.

While many ballots are still being counted and election results are far from being finalized, Lafortune said any shift in voters’ appetite for school bonds could be related to recent, broader affordability concerns across the state. Another factor could be declining enrollment, he added.

“People are aware, especially when it comes to school closures, that there are enrollment declines in a lot of areas. People have fewer kids,” Lafortune said. “So when you’re going to ask voters for money to build school buildings, it might be a little bit harder if at the same time, you’re hearing ‘We don’t have as many kids, we’re losing money, but we also need to pour a bunch of money into school buildings.'”

Lafortune said a school district like Ravenswood City might have an easier time getting voters to approve a school bond when the ask for locally funded school renovations is due to overcrowded schools and a spike in enrollment.

“That’s a much more straightforward message to sell to voters in this age of enrollment declines, shrinking school enrollments and shrinking school footprints,” he said.

Many school districts with measures on the ballot have pointed to California’s “inequitable” state funding formula — which they say fails to fully fund schools the amount needed to serve students enrolled — as the primary reason for needing taxpayer dollars to supplement limited state education funding. Districts said without the tax measure funds, they’ll be forced to turn to teacher layoffs, program losses and deep budget cuts to account for reduced federal funding and “unstable” state funding.

Board trustee Bloom said that just a few years ago, Ravenswood City School District was in a similar position. Struggling with declining enrollment and a $1.35 million budget deficit, the district’s board voted in 2020 to close two elementary school campuses, including Brentwood Academy, which The Primary School then leased.

“We had to ask some really hard questions and make some really hard decisions,” Bloom said. “We made some of those really hard decisions before everybody else had to.”

The Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, headed by Mark Hinkle, who also serves as vice chair of the Santa Clara Libertarian Party, opposed Measure A, along with several other measures, alleging corruption and “election cheating.”

Hinkle, who says he’s authored over 100 ballot arguments against school bonds, argued school bonds accrue interest, effectively doubling the cost advertised to voters.

But local voters have consistently supported the district’s requests for public-funded projects.

Superintendent Sudaria said if passed, Measure A will be the district’s fourth tax measure, comprising of nearly $206 million in local dollars for facility improvements.

Measure A would also make the district eligible for state matching funds under Proposition 2, a $10 billion state bond for campus facility improvements passed by voters in 2024. The amount of state funds districts receive under Prop 2 is generally based on how much they can raise on their own, through local property tax-based bond measures.

The district’s $26 million bond Measure H passed with 87% of the vote in June 2016, while the $100 million bond Measure I passed with 72% of the vote in June 2022. The district also passed a parcel tax in Nov. 2024 with 79% of the vote, which provided $2.7 million for education programs.

Sudaria attributed the community’s continual support in part to the district’s transparency and care with public funds and history of completed projects.

“This community is a resilient community that believes in its children and wants what’s best for its children,” Sudaria said. “It’s not necessarily Ravenswood being this unique place, but we are the benefit of the community prioritizing its children."

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This story was originally published June 7, 2026 at 5:14 AM.