Napa school district continues shedding assets, sells former Carneros school

The Napa Valley Unified School District continues to shed its assets with the recent sale of a second vacant school.

The 9.7-acre former site of the Carneros Elementary School, at 1680 Los Carneros Ave. in an unincorporated area of the county, was sold March 28 for $1.6 million to Thomas Warton LLC, district spokesperson Julie Bordes confirmed this week.

The sale adds to the district’s $11 million sale of the Yountville Elementary School campus to the town, finalized in late April.

The vacant 26-acre Harvest Middle School — which was closed at the end of the 2021-22 school year — could be the next former Napa school site to be sold.

The district in 2022 held a series of public forums about the future of the site, and indicated it wished to work alongside the city of Napa to redevelop much of it into housing. But further public action hasn’t yet been pursued.

The Carneros campus in western Napa County has sat vacant since 2021. It was home to the Stone Bridge School from 2011 to 2021. That K-8 charter school in 2021 moved to the east Napa site of the former Mt. George Elementary school, which the district closed in 2020.

Carneros Elementary School was closed in 2010. Napa County had briefly considered studying the site for farmworker housing in 2022, but the county wanted the district to agree not to sell while the property was studied for suitability. The district declined.

The district’s recent decisions to close and sell school campuses in recent years are generally connected to shrinking local enrollment, which connects to a loss of state funding.

In March, the district reported an enrollment of 16,109 students across its 29 schools, compared to a historical high of 18,344 in 2014-15.

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