Napa judge stops 2nd effort to halt Mayacamas countywide school from opening

A Napa County Superior Court judge confirmed Wednesday, after hearing attorney arguments, that the court will move to strike down a second effort to prevent the Mayacamas Countywide Middle School from opening.

Judge Scott R. L. Young said the arguments made it sound like he needed to make a couple of changes to a tentative ruling issued Tuesday, but the substance of the ruling — and the denial of the motion that would halt the school from opening — would remain the same.

The ruling is connected to the still-active legal battle over the fate of the Mayacamas countywide charter school. The Napa Valley Unified School District sued the Napa County Office of Education board and county superintendent Barbara Nemko in March, after the county board approved the charter school.

The district, seeking to undo the approval of the school, argues the board and Nemko didn’t follow the law when assessing and approving the school, and that they didn’t properly consider the financial impact the charter school would have on the district and other Napa County districts.

That financial harm, coming via a projected loss of enrollment from the district to the charter school, is part of the reason why the district has attempted to stop the school from opening. The district previously sought an emergency injunction in March to stop the charter school from moving forward, but that effort was denied because the projected harm wouldn’t be happening immediately and there was time for a full hearing.

But the second attempt at a preliminary injunction will also be unsuccessful. The court found, according to the tentative ruling, that the potential harms that would come to the charter school organization are “far more concrete, and far more considerable than those facing NVUSD in the absence of a preliminary injunction.”

Bonifacio Bonny Garcia, an attorney working for the district, argued at the Wednesday hearing that the loss of students — and funds — to the charter school isn’t speculative, even though the exact amount of that loss is.

He also argued the school represents a conversion of the existing Mayacamas Charter Middle School, given that it will use the same facility and staff, and serve many of the same students.

Conversions of existing public schools — including charter schools — into countywide charter schools is banned by a portion of the state education code. But the tentative ruling notes that “reasonable persons” could conclude the countywide school isn’t a conversion, so it would be improper for the court to “exercise its independent discretion on the issue.”

Garcia also argued that the countywide school wouldn’t provide educational services that can’t be offered by a district charter, as required by statute.

“Nothing in that petition identifies a single educational service that’s going to be provided to countywide kids that isn’t already being provided,” Garcia said.

Attorneys for the county schools board and the Napa Foundation for Options in Education — which runs the Mayacamas school — largely deferred to the tentative ruling. John Lemmo, attorney for the foundation, argued that the reason the existing Mayacamas charter school is set to close and the new countywide charter would open in the same location is not because it represents a conversion, but because there’s only one facility.

He also argued that the school was tiny compared to the district, and it would suffer much more than the district should the preliminary injunction go through.

“If there’s a preliminary injunction that would stop the county from proceeding with the process to open the charter,” Lemmo said. “ That turns balancing of harms on its head, there is no school at that point.”

You can reach Staff Writer Edward Booth at 707-521-5281 or edward.booth@pressdemocrat.com.