In the late 1990s, a group of Napa families organized to form the first charter middle school in the Napa Valley Unified School District. The River School curriculum is based on the "Individual Education" model pioneered in the 1970s at a Hawaiian private school. River School principal Linda Inlay came to Napa after founding an independent school in Hawaii based on the Individual Education principles, now also called "Ho'ala Education" for the Hawaiian word meaning "awakening of the self."