Citing declining enrollment, Cabrillo College announced Wednesday that, following the end of the current semester, it will not renew the lease on the Scotts Valley extension campus.
According to Vice President of Instruction Kathleen Welch, the decision to terminate the lease on the property at 104 Whispering Pines Drive came after classes were repeatedly forced to be canceled due to low enrollment numbers.
“This is a complete college issue we are having with declining enrollment,” she said, adding that enrollment numbers were down at Cabrillo’s Aptos and Watsonville campuses as well.
Currently, 101 students are enrolled in five college-level English and math courses at the Scotts Valley campus — 55 of which hail from the Scotts Valley and San Lorenzo Valley areas.
If those classes were all filled to the 35 students needed to be considered full, Welch said, the campus would have 175 students.
Welch said that the closure of the Scotts Valley campus will not mean the end of Cabrillo’s presence in the northern end of Santa Cruz County, but rather begin a transition into a new style of classes that split their time between online and in-person elements in the 2015-16 school year. Cabrillo has offered college-credit courses in Scotts Valley since 2007.
“We will still be in Scotts Valley, we just won’t be leasing our current site,” she said. “We definitely want to keep our presence there.”
To that end, Welch said, Cabrillo plans to rent space on Saturdays at the Scotts Valley Community Center, where students can meet to take exams in person.
One of the appeals to having a hybrid class structure is that it allows more flexibility for students — most of whom work during the week — to do their coursework online and take exams in person on the weekends.
Cabrillo is also exploring its options as far as potential partnerships with the high schools in Scotts Valley and the San Lorenzo Valley, Welch said, with an eye toward making courses more widely accessible.
The college is currently conducting a survey for Scotts Valley and San Lorenzo Valley residents about course offerings and locations. To participate, visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/KBMJQWT
