As a task force of schoolteachers, parents and others ponders closing one of Napaâs middle schools amid falling attendance and state funding, a survey of campuses illustrates sometimes sharp differences in their demographics and communities â 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 â but difficult to expand â 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 NVUSDâs Middle School Redesign Task Force last week.
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Napaâs public school system has announced it may have to close another school campus to cope with falling enrollment and the resulting decrease in state financial support.
A budget update presented Thursday night to the Napa Valley Unified School District board includes the assumption that one junior high school will be closed starting in the 2022-23 academic year. Such a shutdown would save the district more than $1 million a year, at a time when NVUSD expects revenue from Californiaâs per-student funding system â which the state has currently locked in place due to disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic â to drop by $6 million while the number of local school-age children continues to decline, according to Rabinder (Rob) Mangewala, assistant superintendent for business services.