Natural Bridges School Rented Out as Soquel Plans to Close Schools

On Wednesday Feb 25th the Santa Cruz City schoolboard approved plans to rent Natural Bridges elementary school to Pacific Collegiate Charter school www.pacificcollegiate.com/index.html only a month after the board voted to close Natural bridges and Branciforte schools. Parents, students, and the public spoke in a packed room on wednesday night against the plan in heartfelt, angry and tearfull pleas not to take away their school, speakers were only given 3mins per speaker were cut off at the mic in mid sentence. Pacific Collegiate has been criticized as being an elitist school that caters to the white and affluent.

The School district says they will make $200.00 per year for the rental. The same night Soquel Union Elementary school district may be closing one or more of its schools due to $333,000 shortfall. Schools all around the country are beeing closed down for "budget reasons" Is this the begining of the end of the empire? we'll see.

This Tuesday March 2nd between 10am -12noon we hope to shed more light on this situation on Free Radio Santa Cruz 96.3fm 101fm www.freakradio.org We'll have some parents and possibly kids on to talk about these school closures and how it effects them.
TUNE IN CALL IN 831 427-3772