Danville and Alamo Schools

Of the sixteen schools serving Danville and Alamo, 12 rate 10/10 and the other 4 rate 9/10. That is the whole range. Meanwhile their actual English scores run from 62.8% to 88.5% — nearly twenty six points apart.

So if you are comparing addresses on the rating alone, you are looking at a number that has almost nothing left to say by the time it gets to this part of the valley.

This is not the rating being broken. It folds in how much children improve and how different groups of them do, not just the test result, and it is capped at ten. In a place where nearly everything is already at the cap, that leaves it no room to separate anything. The scores underneath still do.

San Ramon Valley High scores 82.1% in English and 51.3% in maths. That gap, about thirty one points, is the largest of any school in the district, and that maths figure is the lowest of its four comprehensive high schools — below Monte Vista's 64.8%, and below California High over in San Ramon.

The usual explanation for a number like that is who enrols at the school. Here that does not hold. Compared with Monte Vista — same town, same district, almost exactly the same size — San Ramon Valley High is lower in maths in every single group of students: by family income, by parent education, by ethnicity, and among children with and without disabilities alike.

It is also visible before high school. Its two feeder middle schools, Charlotte Wood and Stone Valley, are the two weakest in maths in the district, at 65.9% and 65.5%. So this is a pattern that starts around sixth grade rather than something the high school does to a year group.

With three exceptions, an address here decides the whole chain. No guessing, no split you only find out about in sixth grade.

And the three exceptions, all of them documented by the district itself rather than something you have to work out:

One more that runs the other way: a corner of Golden View Elementary, which is in San Ramon, feeds Diablo Vista Middle here in Danville and on to Monte Vista. Most of Golden View does not — it goes to Iron Horse and California High.

Across the district, 79.8% of students met the state English standard and 74.4% met the maths one in 2024-25. Every school here is well above the California average. High school figures are eleventh graders only.

Alamo has two elementaries and one middle school. There is no high school in Alamo, so every child here goes to Danville for it — and which one they go to is decided at the Stone Valley boundary, not by anything in Alamo.

Stone Valley Middle is the only middle school in either town that splits, sending 55% of its children to San Ramon Valley High and 45% to Monte Vista. All of Alamo Elementary's zone lands at Monte Vista. Rancho Romero's does not: it divides between both. Two neighbours in Alamo can genuinely end up at different high schools.

Worth knowing too that Alamo Elementary is the smallest school in either town, and its English score rose almost eighteen points in a single year. With 168 children tested, a swing that size is as likely to be the year group as the school. Two years is a better read than one.

One corner of Alamo is not in this district

On the western edge, up against the Walnut Creek line, there is a strip of about 1.7 square kilometres that San Ramon Valley Unified does not cover at all. It is in Walnut Creek School District instead, and then Acalanes Union High School District. The district's own boundary data and the Census agree on this, and roughly 991 people live there.

Fair warning that this one is blurry at the edges. Most of those homes carry a Walnut Creek postcode, so plenty of people there would call the address Walnut Creek and never think about it. But if yours says Alamo and you are on that side of town, check — because none of the schools on this page would be yours. The Walnut Creek guide covers both of those districts in full.

Danville and Alamo have gone from about 13,605 children in 2015-16 to 11,952, a fall of roughly 12.1%. Greenbrook Elementary is the only school in either town at its highest enrollment ever.

Gentler than Dougherty Valley, which is down nearly a fifth, but the same direction. District wide, enrollment peaked at 32,504 in 2017-18 and now sits at 28,615, down eight years in a row. Demographers told the board in March 2026 to expect roughly another 16% drop over the next decade, and that forecast already counts about 5,000 planned new homes.

This matters for a practical reason. Falling rolls squeeze budgets, and the district has already been through it — about 200 jobs went in early 2025, including counsellors and social workers, and the county downgraded its financial rating before a state payment last summer put some of that back. The district says its own savings plan runs out after 2027 and the gap reopens after that.

There are no charter schools in Danville or Alamo, and the district has never approved one. Private options are limited nearby.

Alternatives to your public school district covers what exists, what it costs where that is published, and who can actually get in.

The chains here are clean, but check anyway if you are near one of the three splits above, and especially if you are on the western edge of Alamo.

One naming trap, and it catches people constantly. San Ramon Valley High School is in Danville, not San Ramon. San Ramon's own high schools are California High and Dougherty Valley High. Going the other way, Stone Valley Middle is in Alamo rather than Danville, and Charlotte Wood, Los Cerros and Diablo Vista are all Danville.