
The headquarters of the Napa Valley Unified School District.
As a task force of schoolteachers, parents and others ponders closing one of Napa’s middle schools amid falling attendance and state funding, a survey of campuses illustrates sometimes sharp differences in their demographics and communities – including for the junior high school briefly targeted for a possible shutdown last fall.
While the Napa Valley Unified School District has an overall glut of hundreds of student spaces, it also faces an imbalance between its recently rebuilt – but difficult to expand – River Middle School in the north, and three-decades-old campuses serving largely lower-income and minority families elsewhere in Napa, according to a study shared with NVUSD’s Middle School Redesign Task Force last week.
At its second of six planned meetings Feb. 9, the committee wrestled with reconciling the district’s goals of saving money, preserving academic programs and also ensuring equity across all Napa’s neighborhoods and communities as it boils down the number of school sites.
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The committee, drawn from school administrators, faculty and families, is helping guide NVUSD toward a possible board vote in April or May to shut down a middle school campus to cope not only with widespread vacancies but the shrinkage of state education funding based on district enrollment.
NVUSD’s student count has steadily dropped from more than 17,000 in the mid-2010s, and is forecast to slip below 15,000 by 2027, as ever-rising housing costs reduce the number of local families with school-age children and teenagers.
Such an enrollment decline would cost NVUSD about $20 million in state funding, Rabinder (Rob) Mangewala, assistant superintendent for business services, told the task force during the videoconference meeting. By 2022-23, the district earlier announced, it may face a $10 million shortfall as an emergency state rule pegging funding to higher attendance before the coronavirus pandemic’s 2020 arrival expires.
Much of the discussion revolved around the fate of Harvest Middle School on Old Sonoma Road, where an October announcement that NVUSD would consider its closure quickly triggered resistance by its faculty and school parents that led the district to pause the plan.
Harvest’s Latino children account for 76.8% of its student body, the most of the district’s middle schools and well above NVUSD’s overall Latino share of 55.6%. In addition, the school is a hub for the district’s dual-language immersion program of English and Spanish instruction, a program that parents have been keen to protect whatever the campus’ future.
Harvest is one of two local middle schools, along with Silverado on Coombsville Road, where more than 63% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, a common marker for underprivileged families. Nearly 30% of its students are English learners, also the most in the district for grades 6 to 8.
Meanwhile, Harvest with an enrollment of 685 students at the start of February, is filled to no more than half its theoretical capacity, according to the district’s report. Only two dozen classrooms at the Old Sonoma Road site are currently used for teaching, with 26 more rooms vacant since the River School moved its operations north to a rebuilt Salvador Elementary site last year. (California reviews public school construction based on about a 26-to-1 student-teacher ratio for the junior-high grades, and NVUSD’s contract with the Napa Valley Educators Association effectively sets a 30-to-1 maximum, or up to 1,500 students at Harvest.)
Excess capacity also was in evidence at Silverado, with 732 students on a property that could accommodate up to 1,230, and at Redwood, where 809 are enrolled on a campus with room for 1,350, according to the report.
By contrast, the year-old River School on Salvador Avenue boasts some of the Napa system’s newest facilities but serves the smallest junior-high student body of just 479. River also has the least expansion room, with NVUSD’s study forecasting no more than 630 seats at full capacity, and is the district’s only middle school with a majority white population at 56.4%. (Because River was a self-governing charter school until its takeover by the district in 2019, all of its students attend through NVUSD’s open-enrollment system and are drawn from the home territories of the other schools.
With little prospect of NVUSD walking away from its $35 million investment into the River campus, the cost of upgrading structures, utilities, climate-control systems and technology to modern standards will be one factor in deciding which of the remaining middle schools stay open, according to district officials.
NVUSD’s survey listed an estimate of $42.9 million to modernize the Harvest site, compared to $25.5 million at Redwood and $21.5 million at Silverado, which like Harvest opened in the 1950s.
However, the price tag for a Harvest makeover includes $14.3 million for a performing stage absent there but present at its sister schools, in order to keep facilities more equitable across middle schools, said Mike Pearson, assistant superintendent for operational services. (The campus’ original stage was part of Harvest’s forerunner Ridgeview Junior High but was replaced by a central kitchen for school foodservice after Ridgeview’s 1982 closure, he said.)
One development that now seems unlikely to provide a major boost to public school attendance are the plans for housing growth in Napa, district leaders told the task force.
Residential projects started or approved in Napa are now expected to add only about 77 students to local middle-school enrollment, the NVUSD report stated. Fifty-four of those enrollments would result from the creation of the Napa Pipe community at the former Kaiser industrial site in the south of town, but the full effect would not be realized until all of the 900-plus housing units are built out over many years, according to Mangewala.
“So you can see that it’s not really going to generate the number of students we thought it was going to generate out there,” he said, referring to earlier NVUSD forecasts of up to 300 newcomers that were based on more densely built versions of Napa Pipe proposed nearly a decade ago.
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PHOTOS: LIFE AT NAPA’S BROWNS VALLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DURING COVID-19
Students at Browns Valley Elementary School

Browns Valley Elementary School students takes a break outside but remain socially distant due to COVID-19.
Browns Valley Elementary School

A cart of school materials awaits delivery at Browns Valley Elementary School in Napa.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Most Napa Valley Unified School District elementary school students currently attend school in person twice a week and learn remotely the rest of the week. Pictured here are third graders in Carly Berens' classroom at Browns Valley Elementary School in Napa.
Browns Valley Elementary School

A poster inside a Browns Valley Elementary School classroom. As of now, due to COVID-19, most students are on campus just twice a week.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Kindergarten students in Christina Lawrence's classroom at Browns Valley school wear masks and work at desks with plastic barriers. Each has their own container of supplies. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most NVUSD students are only in the classroom twice a week and learning remotely the rest of the week.
Frank Silva

Frank Silva, principal of Browns Valley Elementary School in Napa.
Browns Valley Elementary School

A Browns Valley Elementary School staffer sanitizes books in the school library. Due to COVID-19, much about the school day is changed.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Water fountains are taped off at Browns Valley Elementary School during COVID-19. Students bring their own water bottle and water to school.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Bathroom signs at Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Browns Valley Elementary School

A visitor and wellness screening station at Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Signs at Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Signs at Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Signs and instructions at Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Browns Valley Elementary School

Signs at Browns Valley Elementary School during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Catch up on Napa County's top news stories
In case you missed it, here is a look at the most-read stories on NapaValleyRegister.com.
An appeals court rules the Expo's offer to keep a model railroad exhibit at the Napa Expo — though at higher rent — renders an anti-eviction p…
Transportation officials are looking at creating 2 roundabouts on Highway 29 in Oakville and Rutherford.
The move would follow an earlier round of job cuts by NVUSD in early 2020, as enrollment continues to fall in the district.
Napa’s new card room, Ace & Vine, opened for business this past week. Take a look inside.
Some Napa school traditions manage to live on, pandemic or not. Like picture day.
A mountain lion was spotted in a central Napa neighborhood earlier this month. There are witnesses and a video to prove it.
A woman who was sexually assaulted in a portable toilet at BottleRock 2019 has filed a civil lawsuit against the music festival's organizers a…
Napa County has received more than 840 complaints since its shelter in place order was lifted for the first time in June 2020, records show.
A deteriorating two-story concrete building in remote south Napa County wetlands once relayed news from Asia to the rest of the United States …
Experts say the spike is the result of a pandemic economy and far from normal. In the meantime, skyrocketing home values could displace renters.
You can reach Howard Yune at 530-763-2266 or hyune@napanews.com