Pope Valley Elementary reopened last Thursday with new bikes for its youngest students, a rebuilt playground seating area, and something the tiny rural campus hasn't had in years: momentum. Enrollment at the Napa County school climbed from around 26 students at the start of the 2025-26 school year to 34 by its end, and the district posted academic and safety gains that stand out even more starkly against what came before.
The turnaround follows a brutal stretch for Pope Valley Union Elementary School District, which sits in the far northeastern reaches of Napa County and, according to The Napa Valley Register, absorbed the fallout of a former employee's conviction on child sex abuse charges. In April 2024, Napa County Superior Court Judge Francisca Tisher sentenced former district employee Benjamin Casas to 214 years to life in prison after his conviction on 22 felony counts of child sexual abuse involving multiple students over a decade, according to the Napa County District Attorney's Office. Casas had been arrested in October 2022 following a lengthy Napa County Sheriff's Office investigation into abuse that occurred both on and off campus.
A Grand Jury Probe and a Community Divided
The abuse case was only the beginning. A 2025 Napa County Civil Grand Jury report found the district had failed to provide a safe environment and adequate education, per the Register's reporting. The grand jury's roughly eight-month investigation was launched after a citizen complaint alleging administrative discrimination, and while jurors found no evidence of intentional discrimination against Hispanic families, they concluded that severe bilingual communication gaps had left Spanish-speaking parents isolated and unheard, according to the Napa County Superior Court Civil Grand Jury. Roughly 70 percent of students in the single-school district are Latino, the report noted.
The turmoil didn't stop there. Persistent parent dissatisfaction over administrative decisions and campus climate fueled a weeklong student walkout and boycott in spring 2025, followed by the departure of the district's entire returning teaching staff before the 2025-26 school year began, according to background compiled by the Lee Andrews Group. Community strategy sessions and packed board meetings preceded the boycott, underscoring just how deep the rift had grown between families and administrators.
New Teachers, New Rules, New Numbers
Against that backdrop, the numbers Pope Valley Elementary is now reporting are dramatic. Students proficient in math rose from 22% in 2023-24 to just 15% in 2024-25 before climbing to 33% in 2026, per the Register. Students proficient or advanced in English language arts jumped from 19% in 2023-24 to 57% in spring 2026, and among Latino students specifically, ELA proficiency increased from 15% to 73%.
Safety and wellness metrics moved just as sharply. Reports of students experiencing a physical fight fell from 38% in 2023-24 to zero in 2026. Reports of harassment or bullying spiked to 76% in 2024-25 before dropping to 27% in 2026. Student-reported connectedness to school swung from 69% in 2023-24 down to 46% in 2024-25 and back up to 82% in 2026, while perceptions of safety went from 54% to a low of 38% before rebounding to 73%. The district's overall wellness index climbed 11 points, and attendance rose from 85% in 2024-25 to 92% in 2026.
How the District Rebuilt Trust
The rebound didn't happen by accident. To address the grand jury's findings on communication barriers, Pope Valley Elementary implemented certified translation services, deployed on-demand Language Line interpretation, and recruited bilingual and bicultural teaching staff starting in May 2025, according to the district's own response posted to its website. The district also purchased a new gas-powered minibus that spring to overhaul transportation after unreliable transit was cited by parents as a key operational defect during grand jury testimony.
Kim Kern, who has served as principal and superintendent since 2023, consolidated board meetings, site council meetings, and English learner advisory committee meetings onto the same handful of nights each year, easing the burden on families juggling multiple obligations. “It is all coming together as needed,” Kern told the Register. She said enrollment is increasing because word is getting out that the school is dynamite.
Inside the Reworked Classrooms
The K-8 campus now runs three multi-grade instructional bands. Yuleni Sanchez Bravo teaches the TK-2 classroom, Megan Prichard leads third-through-fifth grade, and Mitchell Johns — the school's teacher leader — teaches sixth-through-eighth grade under the theme “lock-in, level up, mindfulness/wellness.” Kern said Johns knows what middle schoolers need.
The instructional model includes individualized learning plans, a dedicated daily literacy block with groups organized by student need rather than age, and job-embedded coaching in which veteran teachers mentor newer ones. Older students take part in Genius Hour self-directed projects, and this year's cohort is planning a campus beautification and garden project after last year's sixth graders rebuilt the playground seating area by hand. Academic workshops will expand to twice-a-year reading and math sessions, and the school pairs family governance and academic meetings with food and activities for children, all under its slogan, “Together We Can.”
Lingering Questions Over Leadership Pay
Not every part of the district's recovery has gone uncontested. In June 2025, the district's Board of Trustees approved a new contract for Kern through June 2028 that raised her base salary by 46.4%, from $140,000 to $205,000 annually, along with a district-provided vehicle with covered gas and maintenance, according to reporting from The Press Democrat. The raise drew significant community scrutiny even as the district's other reforms took hold.
The Press Democrat's investigative series on the district's leadership crisis, parent boycott, and staff turnover — reported by California Local News Fellow Tarini Mehta — earned first place for youth and education coverage at the California Journalism Awards in July, according to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The district has also weathered past employment litigation, including a multi-year lawsuit against a former substitute teacher terminated over controversial classroom remarks that made its way through the California First District Court of Appeal in 2023 and 2025; the trial court struck the plaintiff's primary claims under California's anti-SLAPP statute and awarded attorney fees to the district.
Pope Valley Union Elementary School District remains the smallest in Napa County, with roughly 30 students enrolled districtwide and a single rural campus that has long struggled with teacher recruitment and transportation in an isolated corner of the county. The region's isolation was on stark display last August, when the 6,800-acre Pickett Fire near Calistoga forced evacuations extending through Swartz Canyons to Pope Valley Road, a reminder of the physical remoteness families here navigate even in ordinary years.
