The video is difficult to watch.
In the 11-second recording, Silverado Middle School student Sophia Vazquez walks around the corner between two rows of green lockers inside the girls’ locker room. Sophia, 12, was most recently a sixth-grader at the east Napa school.
Looking over, she notices that at least four students are holding up their phones. They are aimed at her.
“Why is everyone recording?” she asks with a smile.
Wordlessly, a girl grabs Sophia’s ponytail, pulls her down and slams her head onto a wooden bench on her right side. Her assailant hits or slaps Sophia six times, using both hands.
“Ohhhh!” several students call out at the same time.
“Oh, sh*t!” one student shouts repeatedly. Other students start to scream. Some run away.
Sophia gets back on her feet. “What the f#*@!” she says to her attacker.
“You’re … talking sh*t about me!” her attacker says.
“Hey!” an adult yells as the video ends.
Video of the May 13 attack, which occurred during the school day, quickly spread in the school community and beyond.
Sophia’s mother, Dallas Vazquez, was at work when she got a call from the school office.
“I started panicking,” Vazquez said. “What is going on with my daughter?”
She said when she saw the video herself, “I was extremely upset.”
“The way she grabbed (Sophia) and slammed her down … is just horrible,” she said. “If she had grabbed her the wrong way she could have killed her.”
Dallas said that she and Sophia chose to come forward publicly to have their voices heard and, they hope, to help others in the Napa school community. They explicitly asked to be named in this story.
“Not only (do) the people being bullied need help,” said Dallas, “but the bullies need help too.”
Parents, students and the larger Napa community who saw the viral video all asked the same thing: Are Napa middle schools safe?
The answer is not simple. Administrators, parents, teachers – and even the students themselves – note that the years between sixth and eighth grades are fraught for many young people, regardless of background, familial wealth or geography. The physiological, emotional and mental changes boys and girls go through during those years can cause anxiety and discontent. Sometimes they create a tinderbox for angry outbursts or violence.
But in recent years, Napa Valley Unified School District middle schools have faced additional pressures that appear to have caused a spike in unrest among the student body, statistics and interviews show.
The closures of Harvest and River middle schools at the end of the 2021-22 school year sharply increased enrollment at Silverado and Redwood Middle School. The closures correlate to an increase in behaviors leading to suspensions at Silverado and Redwood in the 2022-23 school year, according to an analysis of enrollment and suspension data from NVUSD. But during the 2023-24 school year, those numbers decreased, as students became more comfortable with their new surroundings and classmates.
Some parents say the district could have made the transition easier, but also note the hard work principals and teachers have done recently to turn things around. Other parents have moved their children to smaller schools, within the district or outside of it. The district also decreased the number of students at Redwood and Silverado.
Bigger Napa middle schools, bigger problems?
NVUSD data on violent incidents and disciplinary measures is complicated. The district could not provide data that shows the total number of violent incidents in middle schools, but did provide suspension data related to students threatening to cause physical injury, actually causing physical injury, or using force. District data shows:
- During the 2021-22 school year, 103 NVUSD middle school students were suspended at least once for any of those reasons.
- During the 2022-23 school year, 149 students were suspended.
- In 2023-24, those suspensions dropped to 124.
In the 2022-23 school year, the number of students at Silverado Middle School increased from 678 the previous year to 868. The number of students at Redwood Middle School rose that year from 828 to 915.
A rough transition after Harvest and River closures
Marta Mouriski, a Silverado Middle School parent and a member of the parent-faculty club, said the district could have done a better job welcoming the Harvest students and making the transition less jarring for everyone.
“All of a sudden you have these new students coming from one school” en masse to Silverado, she said. “... I don't feel that the district gave enough support, whether it be staffing or facilities.”
Silverado Middle School is a phone-free campus. That means that students’ phones are to be turned off or silenced in backpacks from the start of the school day until dismissal.
But it’s the hours when the students are not at school when interactions on social media and via text can spiral, Mouriski said, and hostile exchanges can cause problems when students see each other the next day at school.
“That’s when fights can happen,” she said.
One positive difference this year, Mouriski said, was the new principal at Silverado Middle School, Anne Vallerga.
“She’s on it,” Mouriski said. “She has flipped that school and done a 180. She is incredible. There have been a lot less incidents,” such as the fight in the locker room.
Both Vallerga and a new vice principal, Mark Cimolino, “have been very hands-on,” she said. “This last year has been a lot better, and I don't know if that's been recognized.”
In an interview, Vallerga said she understands that some in the community may have concerns about safety at NVUSD middle schools, but that perception is not her first priority.
“My first priority is to do whatever it takes to support a safe, positive, inclusive, engaging school,” she said. “I know and trust the perception will change over time if we're quietly and consistently doing great things.”
Vallerga started her NVUSD career as a teacher at New Technology High School and has been a teacher since 2012. She said that student confidentiality prevents her from publicly discussing specific incidents at Silverado, but acknowledged the need to curb violence on campus.
“It's devastating to me when something like that occurs,” she said of fights.
Vallerga pushed back against the idea from some in the community that public middle school students get away with bad behavior. She said that "zero tolerance" policies have been proven to be ineffective and can actually increase problems.
In addition, the privacy rights of students prevent disclosure of those consequences, Vallerga noted, even with the victim of an incident.
Still, that privacy is complicated by the reality that many students have phones.
Though Silverado is technically phone-free, she said, they don’t always adhere to that expectation.
“Whenever there was a whiff of conflict or activity, kids are pretty quick to whip out their phones,” Vallerga said. “... We have seen the need to really educate kids on what being a bystander means. And how when you think you're passively witnessing something and capturing it, posting it, sharing it, spreading it, liking it, commenting on it, you're actually participating in the harm.”
Vallerga said middle school can be “one of the most dynamic, difficult times in life" for kids. But she rejected any view that those years are some kind of rite of passage to be survived or suffered through.
“I believe that middle school could, and should, be one of the best times of education," she said.
She also resisted the perception that middle-school kids are defined by mean-spiritedness or misbehavior.
“The truth is, they're really amazing,” she said. “They are really competent. They have a capacity to learn and apply what they're learning in cool ways. They are adventurous. They're pretty much ready to try anything. They love to laugh. They're really wacky and weird and have big imaginations.”
Finding ways to make a home at Redwood
Lara Dooley is a teacher at an NVUSD elementary school, with a son at Redwood and a daughter who attended River. She had some apprehension about her son starting middle school last year but said that by November, she felt he was settling in.
“I was actually really pleased with his year,” she said. “We had a couple of situations where we needed intervention from a counselor and Redwood provided that within the day.”
As an elementary school teacher, she knows that school transitions can be challenging for students and their families.
“It feels like we're all concerned, going from the small elementary school to the big giant middle school,” she said. “It feels like this huge jump and it's a huge change in the kids’ lives.”
In the past, she chose River Middle School for her daughter because of its relatively small size.
“I was convinced that we needed that small environment,” she said. “... I realized everything I loved about River, which was that small environment and teachers who really cared about my kid, it's being met at Redwood as well.”
Teresa Silvagni is a teacher at Redwood, and her older son is currently a student there.
“I feel like the bigger middle schools get a bad rap,” she said.
The middle school years are “a weird age with kids,” she said. “They do act impulsively sometimes. And it's not all bad. It's just a lot of having to work with them and build relationships.”
She said the number of students that teachers work with can make that a challenge.
“I taught 165 students last year,” she said. “It is hard to build that relationship with all of them.”
When asked about suspensions and student behavior, Silvagni said, “If you ask teachers in general, then yes, they would say there has been an increase in classroom behaviors distracting from classwork.”
Silvagni said the closure of Harvest and River middle schools impacted the school culture at Redwood Middle School during the 2022-23 school year that followed.
“I definitely knew a few students who were very angry and upset that their schools closed,” she said. “I would try to talk with them about it and to make them feel welcome.”
Silvagni also attributed behavior problems to inadequate supervision on campus.
“We have two campus supervisors,” she said. “They're great, but they can't be everywhere at once.”
District says concerns lack context, notes statistics have improved
WIthout question, the Napa school district has faced unprecedented challenges in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic, and a related spike in the amount of time students spend on social media, left the district facing new challenges in managing students' safety and well-being.
After the pandemic, “some students had to relearn how to appropriately socialize and communicate with their peers,” said Julie Bordes, the NVUSD spokesperson. “This combined with the increased use of social media has been incredibly challenging to schools and school districts across the nation.”
To Bordes’ point, Napa middle schools aren’t alone. An online search found a series of alleged violent incidents at middle schools across California in recent months.
In May, a group of students at Sinaloa Middle School in Novato allegedly attacked two other students. Novato Police later arrested eight Sinaloa students who reportedly initiated the altercation. The accused students, ages 12 to 14, were booked into the Marin County Juvenile Hall on conspiracy and felony assault charges.
In April, a Bakersfield news station reported that there are as many as five fights per week at Cal City Middle School. One parent compiled more than 30 videos of fights during a three-month period on Instagram.
Also in April, multiple firearms were found in a home in Riverside County after a 12-year-old middle school student allegedly threatened his classmates.
In March, a middle school student from Arizona Middle School in Riverside County faced misdemeanor assault and battery charges after an allegedly unprovoked and violent attack on a sixth-grade girl that was recorded on cellphones.
That same month, parents and staff at El Camino Junior High School in Santa Maria expressed concerns about a rise in violence on campus.
Bordes said that often, peer conflict on campus originates or is amplified by student interactions on social media and text-message threads. She said the Napa school district partners with parents, law enforcement, mental health advocates and other experts to implement “best practices in school safety.” That includes student outreach and education programs aimed at promoting positive social and emotional development.
“Caring for our NVUSD school community’s mental health is equally as important as caring for their physical well-being,” Bordes said. “Various resources and counseling services are offered in our school-site wellness centers, through our nurses, counselors, social workers or therapists.”
Seven NVUSD campuses currently house wellness centers, including American Canyon Middle School, Redwood Middle School, Silverado Middle School and Unidos Middle School.
Parents remain concerned
On Feb. 5, the daughter of Jessica Maxwell, a Silverado Middle School parent, was attacked in the same locker room as Sophia Vazquez.
A video of the attack showed that it appeared to be preplanned, Maxwell said. A number of girls were seen in the area around her daughter when the main aggressor “grabs my daughter’s hair and starts yanking and pulling on her hair. She was punching her in the head.”
Maxwell’s daughter, who was holding a water bottle, swung her hand up to ward off the blows.
“She was saying, ‘Please leave me alone,’” Maxwell said.
The students ran away. Her daughter, who does not have a cellphone, used a Gizmo watch to text her mother to say she had just been attacked.
“I was absolutely devastated,” Maxwell said. “That’s my little girl. She’s 11 years old. It was terrifying.”
To make matters worse, any student with their phone on at that same time could have received the video via one click of an airdrop link or a text.
Maxwell said the school would not tell her if her daughter’s attacker had been suspended or otherwise disciplined. “As far as I know, the girl was back at school two days later,” Maxwell said.
Her daughter now attends Mayacamas Countywide Middle School, a charter school in downtown Napa.
Marie Dennett has been an NVUSD parent for eight years. Her children have attended River, Unidos and, most recently, Mayacamas.
“One of the reasons I didn’t send my son to Redwood Middle School or Silverado Middle School was because of how many fights and bullying experiences I heard of from other family members,” she said.
She said her son had not received enough support from staff or teachers from Unidos to feel safe.
“He didn’t want to go into the locker room and change,” she said. “He was scared. He’d avoid the lunch line because of bullying.”
She said she tried talking to teachers and administrators.
“The answer I would get was (essentially), ‘We have bigger fish to fry’ and ‘We can’t offer extra support for your child.’ They were overwhelmed. Not malicious or uncaring, just overwhelmed.”
She said that’s why she transferred her son to Mayacamas.
“We didn’t want him to be somewhere where he wasn’t safe, and we wanted him to be supported in his learning journey,” she said.
Next year, her son will enter his freshman year at New Technology High School, which is part of NVUSD.
“Going back into the district feels scary,” she said. “We chose the smallest school we could find. I couldn’t imagine sending him to one of the larger high schools.”
The conversation about middle school safety in Napa has also been active on social media.
“It seems like we've really set the bar extremely low when it comes to dealing with violence in our schools,” wrote Napa parent Amanda Krueger in a Facebook post. “With everything getting recorded and shared online, these terrible incidents have a huge impact on the kids involved. They don’t have the luxury of getting over it a few days later because it’s online now and all the kids have gotten a text message. It goes on and on and on.”
Kathy Briggs has three children, two of whom were formerly enrolled in NVUSD schools.
“We didn’t have a good experience at NVUSD and it all started in middle school,” she said in a phone interview.
One of her sons was introduced to vaping and marijuana in the sixth grade, she said, and her daughter was threatened with gun violence at an NVUSD middle school. She said she’s opted to send her youngest daughter to a private Catholic school, even though that means paying around $1,000 a month for tuition — a significant amount of money for her family.
“We’re not religious but it seemed like a more viable option to keep her safe,” she said.
Briggs said she feels that private school offers more supervision and accountability. “I have not heard of any fights in all the years we’ve been there,” she said.
“I feel like something needs to happen about the mental and physical safety of our youth,” she added. “Not one parent I talk to doesn’t fret about middle school and it shouldn’t be like that.”
An increasing number of Napa parents, concerned by safety issues at the district’s larger middle schools, have moved their children to the area’s private and charter alternatives.
Dawnelle Ellis, registrar at Napa Christian Campus of Education, said that the school had 30 middle school students this year and expects 48 middle school students for the 2024-25 year.
Safety in NVUSD middle schools has “certainly been cited as a reason for parents to bring their children to our school,” Ellis said.
Napa Christian is a Seventh-day Adventist school. Tuition for the seventh and eighth grades is $9,600 per year, according to its website.
Cathy Adams is the principal at Mayacamas, which opened in August 2023.
“We have a number of students who come to us from the district middle schools who come because of safety concerns, including seeing fights on campus on a regular basis,” Adams said. “Parents are interested in a school where students are known and seen and supported, and a smaller setting allows for that.”
Because Mayacamas is a charter school, it does not charge tuition.
Jon Fulk, the head of school at Blue Oak School, said middle school enrollment at Blue Oak was expected to increase from about 80 to 120 students when its new middle school campus opens this fall.
Tuition for sixth to eighth grades at Blue Oak is listed as $28,400 per year.
Silverado mom and daughter speak out
Sophia Vazquez spent several hours in the emergency room the night of her attack at Silverado. Going forward, she will have follow-up doctor appointments and possibly physical therapy, said her mother. She experienced pain in her neck, head and shoulder.
Her mother said that, like many parents, her first reaction to hearing her daughter was assaulted was that the attacker should be arrested or expelled.
“But getting her arrested and put into juvenile hall is not going to fix that problem,” she said. “She’s still very young. She needs help.”
“There’s a bigger problem that needs to be fixed,” she added. “And the school is a part of that problem.”
In a recent interview, Sophia said she still has nightmares about the attack.
“I just get scared to leave the house, scared I’m going to see her,” she said.
Sophia said she’s sad that she didn’t get to say goodbye to her friends or teachers. She finished the school year in an independent school program.
“I miss my friends and some of my teachers,” she said.
