brad - Growing Up in Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Celebrates Kids Day While Facing Hard Truths About Racism

brad — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:36:35 +0000

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. On the dark side, the racism expressed by two members of the Pajaro Valley School Board has received international attention and a condemnation from School District Superintendent Faris Sabbah. It’s hard to believe it’s happening here and now, as minorities are divided against each other while a dictatorial government seeks to take away the rights and freedoms of all of them. We won’t survive if we don’t stand together. Trustees Joy Flynn, who was appointed and not elected, and Gabriel Medina, the newest member elected last year, attacked Jewish people who questioned an ethnic studies program they feared was simplistic and didn’t present both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Flynn, who is Black, said that Jewish people have economic power that Black and brown people don’t have and claimed Jews have “presentation power, the privilege that comes with presenting as white.” That is wrong on two fronts. First, there is plenty of discrimination of a racial minority despite skin color. They know your race, as surely as if your skin color were green. It’s terrifying to even admit being Jewish in a time when antisemitism is on the rise, even by elected officials in liberal California. Second, by blending in with a room of white people you get to hear racist slurs about Jews you would never be able to hear if you were Black or brown. It’s horrifying and more present than you would want to believe. Then, there’s Gabriel Medina, a left-wing name-calling reactionary much like the racists on the right. “I don’t see you people at protests against immigration,” said Medina to the board audience in April. “I don’t see you at protests when people are being taken away right now. I don’t see you advocating to bring back Abrego Garcia or Mahmoud Khalil. I don’t see you guys doing that. You only show up to meetings when it’s beneficial for you, so you can tell brown people who they are.” When I called him out on it on his Facebook page and noted that Jewish people have supported minorities throughout their history–having been enslaved and later victims of the holocaust–he said he wasn’t speaking about Jews, but rather about conservatives. I don’t buy it. Neither did Sabbah, the superintendent of the County Office of Education, who wrote that the board members “appeared to invoke anti-Semitic tropes.” He added: “I trust your Board agrees that anti-Semitic rhetoric has no place in PVUSD, least of all from the trustees charged with upholding students’ rights, ensuring nondiscrimination, and fostering safe, inclusive educational environments.” Are these board members really the people we want making decisions for 17,000 diverse students? I think not. Write us at editor@growingupsc.com Thanks for reading. Brad Kava, Editor and Publisher

The post Santa Cruz Celebrates Kids Day While Facing Hard Truths About Racism first appeared on Growing Up in Santa Cruz.

Local Concerns: School Layoffs and Billions on a Train

brad — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 16:40:14 +0000

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 upset, teachers are scared and being laid off, students are frustrated and we don’t see much to be hopeful about. Public schools are so important for those who can’t afford private ones. How, in light of a struggling economy, can our county continue spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a train that is unlikely to happen anytime soon? In a recent meeting, the county’s Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission showed the bill for fixing or replacing old wooden train bridges across the 32-mile proposed track. The cost is $980 million to replace 28 bridges and fix five others. Now, figure the costs of new steel for modern tracks, buying the trains, maintaining them, hiring drivers and taking care of more infrastructure. Some estimate that at another $800 million. Rounding up, we can look at costs of around $2 billion – money the county clearly doesn’t have. It can’t even fix the streets that are deteriorating and dangerous. At a recent Transportation Commission meeting, only one member voted against continuing the rail and trail proposal on the table now. We salute County Supervisor Kim De Serpa for showing fiscal responsibility, while the others are chasing a quixotic dream. De Serpa said she’s not against the train but wanted the RTC to first focus on building the trail portion of the proposed rail/trail, even if it means removing the tracks for now. That’s the proposal we suggest you support. We can build a trail quickly and more affordably and when there’s enough money and public will, we can build the rail section. That’s happened in other cities and makes sense for this county, which has already spent tens of millions of dollars and has only opened a little more than a mile of trail and only three miles of trail have been constructed. One 0.7-mile section under development from Bay Avenue to the Wharf is costing $16 million. That’s more than five times the typical $3-4 million per mile that similar trails cost nationwide. Talk about ill-spent and ill-thought-out spending. Word is officials fear that if they replace the rail with a trail until we can actually pay for one, the public will no longer want to replace the trail when the time comes. If there’s a need and money for a train, the county will come up with it. On the bright side: Growing Up in Santa Cruz is planning a kid’s restaurant review issue in June, letting locals and tourists know the best places to bring kids. We’re also going to have an ice cream month in September. Details to come. Which of these names do you like for the section? Do you have one to add? Meals Without Meltdowns: A Parent’s Guide to Dining Out with Kids in Santa Cruz Messy, Loud & Loving It: A Parent’s Guide to Kid Friendly Eats in Santa Cruz Where to Eat With Kids (Without Losing Your Mind): The Ultimate Family Friendly Santa Cruz Restaurant Guide Goldfish Are Not a Meal: The Best Kid-Friendly Restaurants in Santa Cruz No Tantrums, Just Tasty Bites: The Best Kid-Approved Eats in Santa Cruz Finally…Kids Day is May 3, with kids taking over downtown Santa Cruz and strutting their stuff while local businesses show off their best activities for kids over the summer and the rest of the year. Write us at editor@growingupsc.com Thanks for reading. Brad Kava, Editor and Publisher

The post Local Concerns: School Layoffs and Billions on a Train first appeared on Growing Up in Santa Cruz.

Keeping Families Safe

brad — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 06:45:04 +0000

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 the other hand, chemicals in the batteries are so toxic and unstable, there is no way to quench them when they burst into flames, which has happened four times already. Why should we care? There are three more of these units proposed in Santa Cruz County near hospitals and schools. One across the street from Aptos High; another near Dominican Hospital and a third in Watsonville. Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church noted that the Moss Landing battery operation by Vistra Energy was approved with no arguments. “When I took office two years ago, I accepted several tours of the Vistra facility, including a tour inside the building that burned,” he wrote. “The facility and its safety systems appeared impressive. I was personally given the guarantee that a fire similar to the one that occurred in 2022 at the neighboring PG&E/Tesla operation could not happen at Vistra. We know that is not true. This disaster is worse.” He added: “With this being the fourth fire incident in a little over five years in Moss Landing, it is obvious that this technology is ahead of both government’s ability to regulate it and private industry’s ability to control it… “…Both battery storage facilities initially passed the county permit process, including public hearings, with little to no opposition. Vistra got its first permit in 2020. It was approved by the Planning Commission and never appealed to the Board of Supervisors. It was that uncontroversial at the time.” Conclusion? We don’t need deregulation, we need careful, intelligent study and regulation. And we need the public to speak up and make their representatives put safety first. Let’s congratulate Cabrillo College’s Ethics Team, which was one of only two community college teams to make it to the nationals. They have been up against the likes of Stanford and they are now in the Super Bowl of the competition. That’s an amazing feat in learning how to deal with complex issues and moral problems. We salute you! Read the background from a team member in this issue. Write us at editor@growingupsc.com Thanks for reading. Brad Kava, Editor and Publisher

The post Keeping Families Safe first appeared on Growing Up in Santa Cruz.

Speaking Up for Safety

brad — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 10:17:41 +0000

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 their profits without holding them responsible for community safety. Am I wrong? If a community cared about kids, I believe the government would require builders to pay for sidewalks and bike paths to build their developments. I’d like to know how your neighborhoods stack up? Are your kids safe on the streets? I already know that Santa Cruz has one of the highest per capita rates of pedestrian and bike deaths in the state and I don’t see enough being done to protect people. And why isn’t our money being spent on fixing the roads ? I’m posting some pictures of Sumner Avenue and Rio Del Mar Boulevard, streets that lead to the beach and should be able to be used safely by kids and tourists on bicycles or walking. Forget it. They are mottled with potholes and have been for years. Does no one from the county see this? I’ll ask you to send us photos of the most dangerous roads in your neighborhoods for cars, bikes and kids. Let’s hold the people spending our tax money accountable. They aren’t now. I see examples of it all around. I had an inspiring conversation with the new District 2 County Supervisor, Kim De Serpa. Here’s what she said when I asked her what she thought of spending half a billion dollars on a train. “I think of how many roads that could fix,” she answered. That got my vote. There’s been a ton of spending on the pipe dream of a train in the county, which proponents claim goes by schools and will get cars off the road. I’d love to hear if that will work for your kids. It goes nowhere near schools around me. The money being spent just on studies for it is now up to tens of millions of dollars. I met an engineer with the Regional Transportation Commission, who told me she’s spent 20 years working full time on the train proposal. Multiply that by everyone else working on a project they privately acknowledge the county will never afford, and imagine the cost. Consider how many roads that could have been repaired or how many electric buses—especially given our serious school bus driver shortage—that money could have funded. Send me your suggestions, complaints and love letters and let’s get the word out. Thanks for reading and happy 2025. Let’s get things back on track for families and safety, not pipe dreams. Brad Kava, Editor and Publisher

The post Speaking Up for Safety first appeared on Growing Up in Santa Cruz.