By Jessica A. York, Santa Cruz Sentinel
Pacific Collegiate School principal Simon Fletcher speaks at the school’s new site still under reconstruction Thursday. (Dan Coyro — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
SANTA CRUZ >> With less than eight months remaining before Pacific Collegiate School hopes to throw open the doors to its new Mission Street home, the public charter school is launching a $2.2 million fundraising campaign to cover remaining costs.
The independent public charter school, founded in 1999, has already raised some $7 million in donations through its nonprofit supportive organization, Pacific Collegiate Foundation.
Lauren Lindstrom, a 2008 PCS graduate, told dozens of officials and parents gathered Thursday at the school’s future “forever home” that she is following the future of her alma mater closely.
“As I entered ninth grade, the rumor was that PCS was moving to a real live high school. But the joke was on us, when we arrived to find out that this high school had miniature toilets and was actually built for elementary school students,” Lindstrom said, referring to PCS’s earlier move from a High Street church site to its current lease of the former Natural Bridges Elementary School. “But, despite PCS’s makeshift campuses, PCS continues to fulfill its mission.”
School officials hosted a ceremonial “golden shovel” ground breaking at the two-story former commercial site in the city’s Westside, slated for a planned $9 million renovation. Construction has already begun on the building, mirroring in-progress work at the neighboring property that will hold a Fairfield Inn hotel.
In 2013, Santa Cruz City Schools gave PCS a two-year vacate notice, saying it planned to reopen the site once again as an elementary school to help alleviate area school crowding. In June, however, those plans were put on hold after a flurry of financial concerns were raised by parents, teachers and district officials. The cost of operating Natural Bridges was estimated at $720,000 annually, plus another $1 million to renovate.
PCS Board President Pete Rhode said after Thursday’s event that city school district officials offered to let the school remain at the site for longer, if needed, but that the temporary reprieve would only leave the school in limbo.
The future PCS site, at 3004 Mission St., the former Dascom Research Park, is less than a mile from its current location on Swift Street. Including two portable buildings the school will bring to the new location, the school will increase to about 52,000 square feet, Rhode said.
PCS Principal Simon Fletcher said during the ceremony that he was excited to be within such close proximity of a project long in the making.
“There has always been a sense of impermanence, the same feeling you get when you’re renting a building and you just don’t feel that sense of ownership to really make it your own, to really invest all of your time and energy,” Fletcher said. “We now have an opportunity to have a permanent home, which we’ve been talking about for years and years.”
Recently retired Santa Cruz County Treasurer Fred Keeley, who previously worked as a PCS government and politics instructor, said he had seen a change in local public perception over the often hot-button charter school discussion. Keeley said the “ambient noise has been diminished” in recent years.
“What I love about PCS is the following: It is exactly what every kid’s education should be like. This is what the state of California should be doing for every kid. Nice small class sizes, really engaged community, really engaged parents, really engaged students, wonderful staff and faculty. That can be done in a public school environment, which you are, a public school environment,” Keeley, a former state Assemblyman, said of his response to PCS naysayers.
The nationally acclaimed college preparatory school, serving 510 students in grades 7 through 12, has repeatedly ranked high in U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of the nation’s best charter schools.
Even Keeley, however, said he could not imagine how a school so relatively young and small could have raised the needed millions to begin its new school project. PCS’s $7 million in fundraising success thus far has “exceeded expectations,” he said.
With the elementary school plan shelved, school officials agreed to offer PCS a continuing month-to-month lease through December, if it is not quite prepared to make the move to Mission Street, said Rhode. The school district also has signed an additional year lease to continue using the site’s athletic fields and gym, as the new site does not have those facilities, he said.
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