Significant changes are coming to Napa schools, and tonight marks the first of two public meetings on topics important to parents, students and future generations of Napans.

The Napa Valley Unified School District board will take up potential school closures driven by statewide budget cuts, as well as a move toward magnet schools — programs that encourage campuses to highlight specific areas of learning, such as technology, math or the arts.

Last week, the Register editorial board met with school Superintendent John Glaser and General Counsel Sally Jensen Dutcher. Most of the conversation focused on magnet schools, though the subject of school closures came up.

The potential closures are foremost on many minds because families and teachers are loyal to the vulnerable elementary campuses — Carneros, Capell Valley, Wooden Valley, Mount George — and do not want to see them close. Glaser was careful to say that the board has not yet decided how to handle closures and he does not speak for the board.

Yet he and Dutcher acknowledged that the statewide cuts to schools are forcing hard choices, and that the budget outlook for the next few years is sufficiently grim that it would be hard to stave off closures.

However, some creative solutions could help the schools. For example, Glaser said rural Capell Valley and Wooden Valley schools could be placed in the Pope Valley Unified School District or could create a tiny district of their own.

Magnet schools, Dutcher explained, were created in the 1970s to combat segregation in urban school districts.

In Napa, the district allows parents to send children to schools outside their neighborhoods if they choose. This program has opened up existing magnet schools — such as New Tech High School and Napa Valley Language Academy — to students from around the district. At the same time, Glaser acknowledged, parent choice has led to “unintended consequences” regarding the ethnic makeup at some elementary schools.

Glaser emphasized that creating magnet schools at existing campuses will serve several purposes. Parents will have curriculum-based reasons — in addition to family convenience or where the highest test scores are — to choose one school over another.

Glaser said “one of the reasons we are ready” to move toward magnets is the general academic improvement on Napa campuses, including some that were underperforming previously. “We have viable programs everywhere now,” he said.

So what will it take to bring more magnets here? The district is vying for a key federal magnet-school grant. It should know by the end of the year or early next whether it won.

If not, implementing the programs — including training faculty and obtaining specific equipment — will be a tall order in these austere times. But the district is still planning for the day it can go forward with magnet schools.

“If we do it right at the elementary level, it will lead to big ripples in middle and high school,” Glaser said. “Research tells us that powerful teaching and learning is served by a good, diverse student body at every school.”

Tonight’s meeting takes place at Harvest Middle School at

7 p.m. A second meeting will be at Redwood Middle School on Nov. 18 at 6:30 p.m. At these meetings, the public can help shape the future of public education in Napa.