On a warm July day children lay their hands in pools of paint and place them along the body of a grey Arabian gelding named Zeus at Trinity Rivers Equestrian center. They ride ponies and horses of varying sizes, breeds, and ages around a dusty arena. These horses are dressage champions, western pleasure ponies, and competitive showjumpers but they take first-time riders on a slow circular circuit. A small Arabian gelding named Icee is being bathed by the children in cross ties.
“They say Icee is a magical unicorn,” says a little girl named Anahi.
“Do you think he is?” I say.
Anahi smiles and says, “yes.”
These are scenes from Trinity Rivers’ five-day horse camps that occur throughout the summer. A week of camp costs $650 but a majority of the kids attending camp this summer are here with no charge to their families. Horseback riding is not the only activity children are doing for free in Santa Cruz County. They are making movies at Thomas Farm Films, attending classes at UC Berkeley and Cal Poly with Springboard, eating farm to table at Farm Discovery, learning to navigate the ocean at Wave Warriors, and much more at 30 different summer camps and programs.
These opportunities are provided by Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s Expanded Learning department. Expanded Learning has existed for over 25 years and had been providing after school programs and summer camps to around 100 children at the YMCA. But four years ago Pajaro Valley started receiving money from the state of California’s Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP) which meant the district was being “triple funded,” says Executive Director of the Expanded Learning department, Jen Bruno. Along with ELOP, Pajaro Valley receives money from ACEs and 21st Century Community Learning Centers, which both focus on providing after school programs to underprivileged youth.
Through these multiple avenues of support an incredibly robust summer camp program was enacted in 2024. Along with nearly 2,000 students enrolled in at least one week of summer camp, that summer Pajaro Valley took 300 community members, children, parents, grandparents, to Washington DC for a week. Bruno stated that, “it was the hardest and the most meaningful experience of my educational experience.” The trip was many participants’ first time on a plane. Expanded Learning provided luggage, transportation to the airport, food, and all other necessities while they were away. Georgia Tyrell, assistant director of the Expanded Learning department, stated that, “the idea is that a family can just not worry about where their meal is coming from, how they’re gonna make rent this month, that they can just be a family and enjoy their children’s success as a unit.”
The summer of 2024 was labeled by Bruno and Tyrell as, “the summer of a lifetime” because they were tripled funded and had COVID relief money to spend. Expanded Learning put $4.5 million into the local community by assisting underprivileged youth and their families in 2024. This summer the budget was lower at $2 million. With that money 7,000 camp spots were offered and dispersed between about 2,200 children. Each child averaged three weeks of free childcare and learning experiences.
Expanded Learning has specific guidelines to identify students that should be prioritized for its assistance. English learners, foster youth, homeless youth, special needs students, migrant children, and those who qualify for free or reduced lunch are all targeted. These children are called “unduplicated students.” They are given first priority on camps for the summer.
ELOP strives to ensure children are cared for nine hours a day during the school year along with an additional 30 days apart from the 180 children are expected to be in class. The goal is 210 nine hour days. Last year, Pajaro Valley produced 270 days of activities children were able to participate in free of charge.
Bruno stated that, “what we’re seeing here[in Pajaro Valley] is not happening across the state, it is a one of a kind little program that we were able to do.” Bruno and her team strive to provide an experience akin to affluent households for as many children in Pajaro Valley as possible.
“What you see for students who are really growing and have opportunities to go to college and those things is not just summer school. It’s horseback riding…we’ve never had a Junior Guards out in Watsonville. Now we have pool guards and Wave warriors” says Bruno. The Expanded Learning department is striving to empower children so that they can succeed in the future.
Expanded Learning has partnered with a summer Springboard program at both UC Berkeley and Cal Poly. These programs offer middle and high schoolers the chance to live and study at these universities for a couple weeks during the summer. Courses taken during this program provide students units toward their college education.They are offered programs in a variety of subjects such as business management, physics, visual communications, and many more.
Two Watsonville High students who attended CAL Poly’s springboard program during the summer of 2024 will be attending CAL Poly this fall. Mitzel Dodge-Rocha and Andrea Puente had been determined to study at CAL Poly since they were children.
“This [the Springboard program] is making me fall more in love with the school that if I don’t get in, I’m just breaking my own heart,” said Dodge-Rocha. She opened her acceptance letter on Saint Patrick’s Day, her fathers birthday, and began to cry at the art school she works at. “Then we step outside, and there’s a freaking rainbow…I was like, are you serious?” she says.
Dodge-Rocha will be majoring in journalism after taking a class with CAL Poly’s journalism department head, Brady Teufel, during her Springboard program where she focused on visual communications. “After that class, I was like yeah, that [journalism] is what I wanna do” she says.
Dodge-Rocha is a first generation college student and says that the application process was incredibly intimidating, “I felt like, oh my gosh. Like, I’m not gonna be as smart as these kids. How am I even gonna compete with them? How could I even do this?” She stated that her time at CAL Poly that summer helped her confidence and she communicated with Teufel throughout the application process to ensure she was giving herself the best chance.
During the Springboard program Dodge-Rocha found out that taking an extra English course could enhance her chances of acceptance to CAL Poly. She attended an English language night course at Cabrillo College during her last year of high school. She would go to class at Watsonville High then go to work at the art school before attending class at Cabrillo.
“I worked just as hard as they [other candidates] did, maybe even harder. And so I deserve to be there [at CAL Poly] just as much as everybody else does…I just have to constantly be reminding myself,” she says. She attributes this mindset in part to the time the Expanded Learning department provided her at Springboard.
Puente had a very similar experience with Springboard. That summer she took business and entrepreneurship courses. She says that her time at CAL Poly, “solidified in me [her] that I [she] wanted to start to study agriculture business” because the business courses were very interesting but missing the agriculture element she has grown up with. Puente was a part of Future Farmers of America (FFA) where she raised and showed livestock throughout the state. Her family also has strong ties to agriculture. “My dad’s side, they’ve been traditional farm workers…for generations. Like my aunts and uncles, they’ve planted and picked strawberries and raspberries their entire lives. My dad was the first one out of his eight siblings to get a college degree” says Puente.
She assured that her parents are proud of both her and her brother who currently attends UC Davis. “They [her parents] say it [that they are proud], but then, like, sometimes you just look at them and…you kinda know you’re doing something good” says Puente.
She started taking classes at Cabrillo College in seventh grade and graduated from there at 16 years old. She predicts she will finish her undergraduate career in three years at CAL Poly and then head to law school. She hopes to have a career in either business policy or family law. Above all Puente wants to enjoy her work and feel like she is helping people. “I firmly believe you need to like what you do to be invested in it,” said Puente.
Both Puente and Dodge-Rocha expressed their excitement to meet new people, learn, grow, and experience a different environment. They also presented the gratitude they hold for Watsonville. “I love Watsonville because its community is so close knit…our community is awesome,” said Dodge-Rocha. Both young women hope to give back to Watsonville in the future and continue to be a part of its community.
Bruno and Tyrell, the leaders of Expanding Learning, are looking toward the future. They are working to ensure Expanded Learning can continue to provide stellar summer opportunities and hope to expand these opportunities into the school year. Many affluent students enjoy a year round range of extracurriculars, Bruno pointed out, and Expanded Learning is working toward diminishing the contrast between those who can afford these educational opportunities and those who cannot. Expanded Learning is, “an investment now that’ll be kind of showing up throughout each child’s life,” said Bruno.
Back at Trinity Rivers, Tesi Bruckner, barn manager and head of lessons, coaches campers from the rails of an arena. She tells me about last year, the first year Trinity Rivers partnered with Expanded Learning. In the afternoon all the children go swimming in a pool on sight. “I was scrambling to find lifejackets,” said Bruckner. A majority of the children from Pajaro Valley did not know how to swim and needed assistance. This summer most of the life jackets are going unused. Almost all of the children can swim and Bruckner attributed this to the time they have spent at summer camps encouraging them to develop new skills.
By Lucia Thomas
