Santa Rosa Christian School Board president Lawrence Lehr said he’s heard the rumors too, but the 43-year-old school is not planning on closing its doors prior to the planned last day of school in May.

“There has been no decision to close the school early but there certainly is a possibility that would happen,” Lehr, the longtime board president, said.

School officials announced in January that the school does not have the finances to keep the school open next year. But until now there has been little public talk of the school not being able to see this current year through.

“We are running on fumes,” he said. “We do have a fairly sizeable, maybe 15 or 20 percent of our families prepay, and that money has all been spent. We need people who owe us money to pay.”

“We have a lot of families who have had financial setbacks, we have been running behind,” he said.

The school, which moved to classrooms on the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts campus three years ago, is the second private school to announce its closure this school year, joining 130-year-old Ursuline High School.

At the time of the January announcement, Santa Rosa Christian had 198 students in grades kindergarten through 12. Lehr said eight to 10 families have pulled their students from school since the announcement.

School officials have been actively cultivating contingency plans should the school have to close prior to the official end of the school year in May, Lehr said.

“If we did end up having to pull the plug before the end of the school year, we would have an option (for students),” he said. “A really slimmed down program at the school or we’ve talked to other local private schools and we have other schools that would be willing to take the kids. We will definitely have alternatives if it comes to (that).”

“We are feeling fairly positive we can make it,” he said.

Adding to the school’s woes, Lehr said, was the last minute cancelation of a dinner dance at a gymnasium on Wright Road that was red-tagged by the city for mold just days before the event last week.

“We have tried to be very upfront with everybody in the situation,” Lehr said.

To read about the initial announcement of the school’s closure, click here: http://bit.ly/eBkojW