Hello, citizens of Napa.

For the longest time, Napa Valley Unified School District (NVUSD) has been in danger of budget cuts. It was until this 2019-20 academic school year that elementary schools began to shut down, high school programs got dismantled, and teachers started to lose their jobs. This was all due to the result of budget cuts.

Napa County receives a budget-total of $470,878,520. Amid our COVID-19 threat and our historical BLM Movement, Napa is planning on using $128,000,000 to create a new jail.

5% of the $470,878,520 goes to education while 32% is funded towards Public Protection. While we respect that the 32% of funds are important in helping out our citizens, we believe that the funds should be distributed more properly to programs that are beneficial to our community and our well-being such as Public Ways & Facilities, Recreations & Cultural Services, Health & Sanitation, Public Assistance, and most importantly Education.

Our schools are critical toward a child's success and it is unfortunate how many programs are being taken away from us. For example, Vintage High School lost auto shop, the last class of its kind in NVUSD. Teams of kids from auto-shop participated in the Youth Entrepreneurship Program at Napa Valley College. They even competed four times and won two first place and two-second place awards. It wasn’t just meant for auto-repair; the students in this class came from different backgrounds; either mathematics, physics, engineering, mechanics, etc. Additionally, our Napa District lost LEGACY Youth Project, the only Ethnic Studies and social justice leadership program in Napa meant to heal, transform, and liberate the youth. LYP had a 100% graduation rate and mentors were past alumni of this program; it was a family for many.

Without the proper funds, students won’t be able to have programs like these or future leaders like the current teachers we had who were given pink-slips. A vast amount of these funds are going to Public Protection, but it is currently being used for the police and their new project in creating a $128,000,000 jail, amid our historical BLM Protest. 

We demand a reduction in funds for the Napa Police Department and instead reallocate those funds to community-based programs such as areas relating to education. We are one of the wealthiest cities and Wine Country in the Bay Area, yet schools are being underfunded and ignored instead of being uplifted and advocated upon. Hence, we petition for a change in our funding that can benefit education, community-based programs, instead of the construction for this new, $128,000,000 jail.