Hearts and Hands Preschool, the last community preschool in Calistoga, officially closed its doors on July 31 after more than two decades of serving the city's working-class families. The nonprofit had operated out of St. Luke's Episcopal Church since the early 2000s, and its closure followed months of failed attempts to find a new home, leaving 15 to 17 children ages 2 to 4 without their longtime classroom.
The end came after the preschool's lease at St. Luke's expired and a last-ditch effort to relocate to the city-owned Calistoga Fairgrounds stalled. As reported by the Napa Valley Register, the closure has elicited shock, sadness and disappointment among parents and community members who had rallied around the school. Sadie Beltz, whose grandson attended Hearts and Hands, told the paper that the community lost a sense of responsibility to children, and said Calistoga has changed and will not be the same again.
Hearts and Hands leadership had formally asked the Calistoga City Council on June 3 to grant the nonprofit a five-year, no-cost lease for the city-owned Oak Street House on the fairgrounds property, according to Citizen Portal. Preschool board president Maryann Salinger told the council at that meeting that the program was financially sustainable but that its current facility was unavailable beyond September 30. The city, which had completed its $32 million purchase of the 70.6-acre fairgrounds property from Napa County in July 2024, held sole jurisdiction over any relocation site there, per the same account.
Council Tables Fairgrounds Proposal Over Safety Concerns
On July 14, the Calistoga City Council voted 5-0 to table a separate proposal to move Hearts and Hands into a city-owned 580-square-foot building near the RV park at the fairgrounds, without giving staff further direction, according to Calistoga Currents. Council members at the time acknowledged the program as Calistoga's last remaining community preschool, but cited safety concerns over nearby RV traffic and a desire for flexibility in the fairgrounds' master plan. Alternative sites, including the fairgrounds proposal, ultimately failed to provide the preschool with a new facility.
The lease trouble at St. Luke's had been building for months. Salinger asked the church in February to forgive $4,500 in rent covering April, May and June. Dave Stoneberg said St. Luke's governing body granted the rent-forgiveness request, but conditioned it on Hearts and Hands removing its furniture and materials from the premises and ending its rental agreement by June 30. Stoneberg maintained that St. Luke's was not forcing Hearts and Hands out and said the church had done everything requested to help the preschool continue until June 30.
A Fundraising Campaign That Bought Time, Not a Building
Facing a board finding in December 2025 that the preschool was no longer financially sustainable, parents and board members raised nearly $40,000 to keep Hearts and Hands open through June. Sadie Beltz and Kathleen Costa Butts set up the fundraising campaign in January, and Costa Butts said it reached and exceeded its goal. The two women spent weekends tabling at Calistoga's Saturday farmers market to drum up support, but Costa Butts and Beltz said they were unaware at the time that the preschool lacked any alternative building lined up.
Costa Butts, who works as a senior accountant in Santa Rosa and whose husband works as a sales representative across the North Bay, said the closure could force some families to leave the community entirely if they are reduced to a single income. Many Hearts and Hands parents commuted from upvalley to Napa and other denser job centers, relying on the preschool's hours of 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays to make that commute work. With the school gone, families now face Sattui Preschool, operated by the Napa County Office of Education, which has a long waitlist and offers only a part-day schedule.
Squeezed Between Rising Costs and a Shrinking Client Base
Hearts and Hands traced its roots to May 2004, when it opened as St. Luke's Preschool inside the church's parish hall following $100,000 in parishioner-funded facility improvements, much of which was later forgiven, according to St. Luke's Episcopal Church. It incorporated as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit under its current name in 2012, was licensed for up to 30 children, and for years topped out at 27 enrolled kids after starting with just six registered children in 2009. The program was led locally, with Calistoga native Yoanna Contreras as director and fellow Calistoga native Rosalinda Ramirez as lead teacher, a staffing profile community members said built deep trust with upvalley working families.
The financial pressure built as the preschool's 4-year-old enrollment shrank once that age group became eligible for transitional kindergarten under Assembly Bill 130, which allowed 4-year-olds to attend TK statewide by the 2025-26 school year. Transitional kindergarten has existed in California since 2012, but its expansion accelerated the squeeze: a June 2025 report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that while the state's expanded universal TK pushed public enrollment past 150,000 children in 2023-24, it simultaneously pulled away the 4-year-olds whose tuition had long subsidized the higher cost of caring for toddlers.
As Hoodline reported in its coverage of a similar squeeze facing Sacramento-area families, private centers rely heavily on tuition from older 4-year-olds to offset the smaller group sizes and higher staffing ratios required for 2-year-olds. Hearts and Hands felt that dynamic directly: as its 4-year-old population left for free TK, the school enrolled more 2-year-olds requiring costlier staffing, and it raised tuition to $1,100 a month in 2024 after charging $950 a month for years. New 2-year-olds were charged $1,500 a month. The state, meanwhile, has kept expanding the public side of the ledger — California's FY 2026 budget allocated $6.2 billion for early education, including $3.3 billion for universal TK and $2.9 billion for the California State Preschool Program, serving 278,273 children combined in 2024-25, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.
A Widening Gap in Local Child Care
The loss of Hearts and Hands lands on top of an already severe regional shortage. Licensed child care spaces in Napa County are available for only 23.8% of children with working parents, leaving more than three-quarters without access to licensed local care, per Kidsdata.org. The gap is even starker for the youngest children: First 5 Napa County data from 2025 found roughly 8.3 children for every licensed infant and toddler slot countywide, meaning licensed capacity exists for only about 12% of infants and toddlers.
Hearts and Hands had appealed specifically to working-class, largely bilingual families in Calistoga for more than two decades, and its closure followed long struggles to secure both stable finances and a sustainable home. With Sattui Preschool's waitlist and part-day-only schedule the main remaining option, upvalley families who once relied on Hearts and Hands' full-day hours are now left piecing together care on their own.
