MacArthur Park Charter School Opening

196 Students Attending at Former SVUSD Campus

By Anna Pier

MacArthur Park Charter School (MPCS), with 196 students enrolled as of August 17, opened as the third charter school in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District (SVUSD). The school is located at the site of the former Prestwood Elementary School, 343 E. MacArthur Street. The majority of the students enrolled in MPCS, over 60 percent, are returning Prestwood students. Founding Director Danielle Yount said that the new charter school had received the keys from the District on July 1, and they had met a big challenge by opening in seven weeks.

Yount credited the community coming together to get the school ready for opening day. Describing this as “something really beautiful,” Yount said parent volunteers were present almost every day, donating time, because they care so much about the school. SVUSD had left for the charter school all the basic components for classrooms – student desks, teacher desk, shelves.

The new Director comes to the new charter school with 11 years’ experience as principal of a charter high school in Santa Rosa, of which she was the founding principal. Her first teaching was in elementary for seven years, and she affirmed that she is excited to get back to that level. Yount praised the work of the charter school’s Board, chaired by Sarah Vaughn Robertson, saying “they laid a beautiful foundation for the school prior to my joining the team on July first.”

MacArthur Park Charter will have ten classrooms for the seven grades they offer: one Transitional Kindergarten, two Kindergartens, one First grade, one Second, a Second-Third combo, one Third and one Fourth, and two Fifth classrooms. They are using the Sonoma Valley Unified adopted textbooks for English Language Arts, and math. Yount emphasized that the teachers, who are all new to the District, will be integrating all content areas into their teaching.

The week before school opened was devoted to professional development, according to Yount. This emphasized the STEAM-based curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) that MPCS is offering. “Project Leads the Way” provided 16 hours of training. Teachers participated in project-based teaching “to practice and support their instruction and expectations’ for their students.” Yount added, “we want to get our kids’ hands in projects.”

The charter school’s approval by Sonoma Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees, was contentious. After long deliberations as to which elementary site to close, the SVUSD Board had voted in September 2025 to close Prestwood. The decision was the last step in a cost-saving, budget-balancing effort that was “right-sizing” the number of elementary schools in the District. The estimated savings was $2 million. Of the four elementary schools in the District, Prestwood was the least representative of the majority demographic of Valley, and its Eastside location required additional bussing to bring enough Valley students to the site. In the 2025-26 school year, Prestwood’s student body was under 40 percent Latino, a percentage substantially lower than for the other three elementary sites, and for the District as a whole (almost 70 percent.)

In February, the SVUSD Board voted to approve a charter petition for MacArthur Park Charter, ignoring the urgent appeal of VMTA (Valley of the Moon Teachers Association) to deny this large expenditure, citing  massive staffing cuts in the District; and disregarding the advice of the report by District staff. That report, created at the request of the Board, recommended delaying the decision until the new charter school group’s proposal was more complete. 

The following month the SVUSD Board voted, in deliberations lasting less than a minute and not considering any other option, to offer the Prestwood site to the new charter school. The Sonoma Valley Unified School District will give MacArthur Park Charter School approximately $2.3 million for operations this school year.

Of the 196 students enrolled in MPCS for the 2026-27 school year, Director Yount reported that 32 percent are identifying as Hispanic.