Enriching Programs Gone From Our Schools

By Julie Eastman and Joanne Yates
Napa Valley Register, February 15, 2010

We agree with the Register’s editorial that “Students must be top priority in St. Helena” (Jan. 24). Some history might help your readers understand that students have always been the recall’s first priority. Supporters want to provide all students an opportunity to succeed regardless of scholastic ability. It is the same attitude that has been an integral part of wine-growing culture of this valley.

Back in the 1970s, for example, vintner Jack Schulz faced near disaster his first year. In the middle of harvest, his crusher broke down. But, within hours, Beringer Vineyards (courtesy of the Raymond brothers) hauled over what he needed. They saved Napa Creek’s first vintage.

It would have been just as easy to ignore Jack’s troubles, chalking up his problems to inexperience or bad luck. After all, what difference would one less winery make? Lucky for Jack, and all who worked for him, that was not how most of the wine industry greats thought.

Saving Jack’s first year meant experience for a winemaker who later made wines with the legendary Al Brounstein. The winery gave work to designers and printers, brought people to the valley for holiday festivities and became a valuable part of the community.

Jack’s experience represents a tradition of generosity and cooperation that also influenced how we raised and educated our children. Like winery stories, there are school experiences that bear repeating because they too are testimony to our community’s greater spirit.

In 2001, Carol Geyer helped Cory Roche create a project for the special education high school students — making dog cookies. Micki Voisard, a leading animal nutritionist, joined in the effort and, after batches of hard-as-a-rock bone shapes or mushy blobs, the students developed a recipe: a perfect recipe. They shopped for ingredients, baked, weighed, packaged and sold their goods at local stores and at the Farmer’s Market.

Wine Country Cases donated wooden display boxes. St. Helena Olive Oil Company housed a professional oven for students to use. With Gayle Davies’ guidance, students started an organic garden for some of their ingredients. Mike Snowden’s shop students made 11 raised beds; Whiting donated organic soil.

As the project grew, so did the skills and confidence of the students. With the community, Mr. Roche developed a project that seamlessly integrated students into life-learning activities in and out of school. That was exactly what should happen in special ed classrooms, and it cost the school nothing beyond salaries: sales paid for supplies, classroom trips and materials as well.

That same community involvement was instrumental in making Madrone Continuation School, Work Experience and a host of vocational classes practical and meaningful for a range of students. Madrone had a 40-year history in St. Helena based on helping our community’s struggling students. By staying on campus, but in an atmosphere better suited to their needs, the majority of these students graduated.

Work Experience enabled students to gain high school credit by working with community business members. The program was not only about learning skills, but helping students understand their own goals and talents as well.

These classes and programs did not impoverish St. Helena’s schools or keep students from going to college. They made the schools and our community richer by giving everyone an opportunity to be successful and to participate in that success — just as the Raymonds did for Jack Schulz.

Yet in the last several years, these programs have disappeared, not for lack of money, but for a change in priorities that has favored all-time high administrative salaries and staff, unnecessary legal actions against the Napa County Unified School District and St. Helena parents, extravagant retirement packages and an arrogant disregard for the needs of the district’s entire student body.

(Eastman was St. Helena Unified School District’s Certificated Employee of the Year in 2004, and now works for Napa Valley Unified School District. Yates is a former substitute teacher and volunteer in Napa and St. Helena.)