Tomales High School

Tomales Union High School opened on Aug. 5, 1912, with 23 students and one teacher/principal located on a hill in downtown Tomales. The school grew quickly: before the two-classroom school was a decade old, it was expanded to 10 classrooms thanks to a $30,000 school bond. The California Field Act mandates that all the state’s public schools be earthquake safe, and Shoreline School District trustees in the 1960s were faced with either retrofitting the old school or building a new one. Bond elections to finance various options followed and were twice narrowly defeated. In 1967 a third election was successful. Affirmative votes in all precincts except Inverness resulted in an overall 73 percent approval for the $1.1 million bond to finance a new high school. In 1969, the new high school opened along Tomales-Petaluma Road. Much of the school was extensively remodeled in 2011.

Tomales High teams were originally called the Wolves, but in 1950, the name was changed to the Braves. In 2001, Shoreline School District trustees decided the name was disrespectful to Native Americans and voted to change it. Many district residents objected, including several Miwok descendants who said the name had been changed to Braves to honor them. The Trustees voted to keep the name Braves but to drop the Indian image.[4]

Tomales High serves the greater Tomales Bay and Bodega Bay communities in Marin County and Sonoma County as the comprehensive high school of the Shoreline Unified School District. The school serves an area famous for its oyster, ranching, and fishing industries.

Tomales High is fed by Tomales Elementary School and West Marin Elementary School. Tomales Elementary serves the northwest Marin communities of Tomales, Dillon Beach, Fallon, and Marhsall as well as the Sonoma County communities of Valley Ford, Bloomfield and parts of rural western Petaluma. Students from the Sonoma Coast towns of Bodega and Bodega Bay attend Bodega Bay Elementary and feed into Tomales for middle and high school. West Marin Elementary School serves the southern end of the Shoreline Unified School District including the West Marin communities of Point Reyes Station, Inverness, and Olema.

The Tomales Braves are a member of the North Coast Section. The Braves compete in the Coastal Mountain Conference and are a member of the North Central League II.