By Jondi Gumz
Jennifer Vered, who chairs the Computer Applications Business Tech Department at Cabrillo College, wanted to make sure her students had the textbooks they needed before classes began Aug. 24.
Jennifer Vered, who chairs the Computer Applications Business Tech Department at Cabrillo College, hands out loaner textbooks to students on Aug. 21, ahead of the first day of class. • Photo Credit: Jondi Gumz
On Friday, she was in the Cabrillo parking lot in Aptos handing out loaner textbooks, next to where dozens of out-of-town fire trucks had parked, staging for the CZU Lightning Complex fires, which has forced evacuation of 77,000 people from their homes in Santa Cruz County.
The fires, which have spread to 80,000 acres, came on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected 1,698 people in Santa Cruz County, 36 percent being millennials ages 18 to 34.
The pandemic, which arrived in mi-March, forced all instruction from kindergarten to college to move online.
Among those evacuated by the fires were Vered, her husband and their son, who’s in middle school, who left their home in Ben Lomond.
She said her son had been eager to return to classes and see his friends, but he’ll have to patient. Because of the fires, the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District will be closed through Tuesday, Sept. 8.
Vered said many of her students at Cabrillo qualify for financial aid but the money doesn’t arrive until three weeks into the semester. So she applied for a grant to provide loaner textbooks to students to ensure they can follow her lessons.
This is the third year she’s been able to provide loaner textbooks. The books are returned at the end of the semester and loaned out to the next semester’s students.
Her philosophy: “We’ll figure it out.”