On the good news front, May 3 is Kids Day downtown, the most wonderful transformation of Santa Cruz into a huge family festival with kids playing music, dancing, being DJs, acting, doing art, you name it. Streets are closed to cars and booths of kids’ programs are set up along the streets by Abbott Square. If you want to see the city at its shiniest and most fun, come down and check it out from noon to 4pm. If you won our coloring contest and can bring in your photo from the issue to our Growing Up in Santa Cruz booth, we have prizes for you. First come, first served.…
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Local Concerns: School Layoffs and Billions on a Train
There are so many things to be concerned about this spring. Here are some in no special order. How will the Pajaro Valley School District handle the stress of cutting $5 million from the annual budget, as parents and students fear losing teachers and classes. The district is the area’s largest at 27,000 students and it’s a prognosticator of what will happen to other area districts, as state and federal budgets are cut and the county has become so unaffordable that districts are losing students (600 in PVUSD). Not to mention the numbers of students they will be losing as the current administration has made immigrants the enemy. Parents are…
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Keeping Families Safe
You only have to look southward at the flames and poisonous smoke that came from Moss Landing recently to know what deregulation looks like. We have a new president promising to deregulate industry and make America more profitable. But at what expense? The Moss Landing fire is terrifying, not just because it can’t be put out, but because the hazardous chemicals coming from it are landing on the country’s richest agricultural salad bowl and the surrounding protected Elkhorn Slough and Marine Sanctuary. It’s a serious quandary. On one hand, the battery units are designed to store solar and wind energy and move away from fossil fuels, an environmentalist’s dream. On…
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Speaking Up for Safety
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to keep better track of how our tax money is being spent. I hope to make this a group effort among our readers. As a family magazine, we must take a good look at how families are being served, or more accurately, neglected. Do your kids have safe ways to get to and from school on their own? Mine don’t. If we don’t drive them, they have no sidewalks or bike paths to get there. How did that happen? The only answer I can come up with is greedy developers put in homes and ignorant or lazy politicians let them build and earn…
