Napa school enrollment down amid shifting middle school landscape

Enrollment in Napa's K-12 schools has continued to decline at a precipitous pace into this new school year.

Indeed, Napa County is projected to see the fifth largest percentage drop in students from 2021-22 through the current 2022-23 school year among California's 58 counties — a 1.93% decline or loss of 367 students, taking the county down to 18,645 students total — according to a September California Department of Finance report.

In an interesting coincidence, that figure is nearly the same as the number of students Mayacamas Charter Middle School — which won state approval in mid-September — plans to have when at full size. The charter, which would likely draw from a population that would otherwise go to district schools, plans to have 336 students.

The report notes that only Santa Clara County and the low-population Del Norte, Inyo and Alpine counties are projected to lose a comparable or greater percentage of their students through that time frame.

Enrollment is an important factor for California schools to consider, given that most state funding is tied to enrollment numbers through a formula known as Average Daily Attendance (ADA). According to Rabinder (Rob) Mangewala, the Napa Valley Unified School District assistant superintendent for business services, the impact of enrollment drops has declined owing to a move in the state budget that allows districts to average the past years of ADA for funding purposes, but that doesn't eliminate the declining revenues.

NVUSD — which covers 27 campuses across the city of Napa and American Canyon — has enrolled roughly 16,109 students this year, according to the district's Aug. 30 enrollment data, down from the 16,516 students it enrolled during the last school year.

NVUSD's enrollment during the past decade peaked in the 2014-15 school year, when the district had 18,344 students. But since then, enrollment has dropped by hundreds of students each year, a decline that's intensified to roughly 500 students each year during the recent COVID-19 pandemic years. The decline is expected to continue, with enrollment reaching 14,316 students by the 2027-28 school year, according to a 2021 report from King Consulting of Sacramento.

Mangewala said in an email that California's statewide enrollment has been dropping since the pandemic started, from about 6.2 million students in 2017-18 to about 5.8 million last school year — a two-decade low. But Napa's decline has come more rapidly than at the state level because of several local factors that tie back to the high cost of living here, according to Mangewala.

"The enrollment decline in Napa is greater than the state due to a number of local factors, including low birth rates, lack of adequate affordable housing, and a local job market that does not support the enormous cost of living in our county," Mangewala said in an email.

He also noted that the service industry was hit especially hard during the pandemic. And because that industry is one of the largest employers in Napa County, the impact on working families in that industry was significant and likely led to greater declines in enrollment than in other counties.

NVUSD has dealt with the declining enrollment in a variety of ways in the past, which has included cutting school employees and shutting down school campuses. (Owing to one-time state funds, among other reasons, the district is anticipating it won't have to lay off any school employees this year.)

For example, Harvest Middle School officially closed at the end of the 2021-22 school year, and the River Middle School was reconfigured into the Unidos Middle School for a duel-language academy this year. That move followed the closure of the Mt. George and Yountville elementary schools at the end of the 2019-20 school year.

NVUSD middle school students now attend Silverado Middle School, Redwood Middle School or Unidos, Mangewala said.

As the district shuffles its middle school offerings around, two elementary schools — Browns Valley Elementary School and Shearer Elementary School — are in the process of being converted to TK-8 schools, with each adding a new grade level each year. This started at the Browns Valley school this year, and at Shearer last year.

Though public school enrollment has declined statewide, private school enrollment has been increasing, growing by 3.9% from the 2020-2021 school year to 2021-22, a reversal of a trend of falling enrollment during the 2010s, according to reporting from EdSource. But that trend generally isn't reflected in Napa County's private schools, Mangewala noted, where private school enrollment has declined 23% from 2018-19 to 2021-22.

One former longtime private school in downtown Napa, St. John the Baptist Catholic School, closed at the end of the 2020-21 school year for economic reasons, citing enrollment levels that were too low to make ends meet, according to past Register reporting.

Of course, the decline doesn't apply to all private schools. Blue Oak School in downtown Napa is currently building a new middle school campus, and is planning to increase middle school enrollment by about 40 students.

The former St. John campus is set to be used by the Mayacamas Charter Middle School, which was narrowly approved by the California State Board of Education in mid-September, on a 6-5 vote, after both the NVUSD school board and the Napa County Office of Education boards voted to deny it. (Statewide charter school enrollment was also down for the first time from 2020-21 to 2021-22 in two decades, according to EdSource.)

A primary reason for both local board denials was the financial impact Mayacamas would have on NVUSD — though a few state board members questioned whether the impact was significant enough to justify denial.

Petitioners for the charter school were hoping to open with an enrollment of 180 students and add 52 students each year until it grew to a full capacity of 336 students.

That, according to the district's findings, would bring the local enrollment decline from 17% over the next 10 years to a 19% reduction over the same period. The findings state that the enrollment loss would cause cuts in programs and services, increase the need to close more district schools and cause the district to cut 34 teaching jobs, among other cuts.

But amid the local middle school shift spurred by enrollment struggles, some parents are hoping the Mayacamas school will be the option they're looking for.

Tyler Williams, a parent of a sixth-grade student, said in an email that his child is now attending Redwood Middle School, which has seemed okay so far. But it was a difficult decision, Williams said, considering the shift in options, and he would have preferred a smaller school.

Williams noted that now that the charter school is approved, he'll be looking into shifting his son to Mayacamas next year.

"Big middle schools are not for him, but that's all he's got," Williams said.