Napa Valley USD Middle School Closures: What To Know

NAPA VALLEY, CA — Following the Napa Valley Unified School District's vote Thursday to close Harvest Middle School and reconfigure River Middle School as a language immersion academy, the district said new middle school boundaries will be designated by September for the middle school changes set to take effect for the 2022-2023 school year.

The district expects that current students at Harvest Middle School will know by September whether they have been assigned, based on their residential address, to Redwood or Silverado middle schools for the 2022-2023 school year.

Prior to that, the district is offering an early choice option for students who were scheduled to start their first year at Harvest or River middle schools.

"A family with an incoming 6th-grade student to River or an incoming 6th-or 7th-grade student to Harvest may contact the District by May 14th and request a change in school placement for next year, 2021-22. This early choice option will only be available until May 14th and the district will be proactively reaching out to contact families to review their options," according to a FAQ page on the Napa Valley Unified School District's website.

As for current sixth-graders at River, they will be allowed to complete their middle school experience at the River campus. However, during their eighth-grade year in 2022-2023, these students will experience the new programming at the proposed language academy.

District officials noted that "early choice" is for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year, while "Open Enrollment"— the option to apply to a school other than a student's resident school— is for the following 2022-2023 school year.

As for whether early choice gives a student a better chance of getting a school they want when middle schools change, the district said students impacted by closure or redesign will be given priority when it comes time for open enrollment.

See the complete list of FAQs:

In the 2022-2023 school year, NVUSD middle schools will include American Canyon, Redwood, Silverado, and the yet-to-be-named language academy that will occupy the River campus on Salvador Avenue.

"In 2022/23, the River campus will be changed into a language academy to accommodate our robust Dual-Language Immersion Program currently running at NVLA, Pueblo Vista, Harvest, and Napa High School," district officials said."This academy will allow NVUSD to offer a high-quality school-wide dual-language middle school program that fully embraces bilingualism, biliteracy and biculturalism."

As to why NVUSD decided to close and reconfigure the middle schools, district administrators pointed to current and projected low enrollment of elementary students which results in lower student enrollment entering middle schools.

The state budget, however, was not expected to offset the decline in enrollment, so a Middle School Redesign Task Force was formed and held a series of meetings.

"One of the district’s major asset categories is real property, which includes land and school facilities," the district said. "It is the board’s fiduciary responsibility to maximize these assets, ensuring that they are utilized efficiently and effectively so the district can continue to provide exceptional learning opportunities for all middle students."

According to the district, the current enrollment of Harvest Middle School is 685. River Middle School has a current enrollment of 467 students with a total classroom capacity of 567 students. Based on current enrollment, Redwood Middle School has excess capacity for up to 541 more students, Silverado Middle School has excess capacity for up to 498 more students and American Canyon Middle has excess capacity for up to 369 more students.

Each school is expected to have existing facility capacity to absorb all of the proposed students from the project without the need for any increase in capacity through construction or addition of new classrooms, and no facility modifications are necessary in order to reconfigure River Middle School to a dual-immersion language academy campus, district officials said.

Read the NVUSD school board resolution closing Harvest Middle School and Reconfiguration of River Middle School into a language academy campus:

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• Napa's Harvest Middle School To Close, River Middle To Shift
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