Santa Rosa Christian School closed its doors for good last Friday – two weeks before officials at the 43-year-old school had originally planned to shutter the campus because of lack of money.
“We ran out of money a long time ago,” said school board president Lawrence Lehr. “It’s been day to day for months.”
The school, which occupied rooms in the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, fulfilled the number of days required by the California Department of Education before calling it quits, Lehr said.
School officials hosted a barbecue on Friday and seniors are still scheduled to go through a graduation ceremony on May 27.
School officials announced in January that the school did not have the finances to open the doors next year. At the time of the announcement, Santa Rosa Christian had 198 students in grades kindergarten through 12.
Friday’s ceremony was “bittersweet,” according to Lehr, who has been active with the school for 15 years.
“It was a neat way to wrap up a year and the school history. It was a positive thing,” he said of Friday’s event. “For someone who has been involved in the school for as long as I have, it was difficult.”
Officials announced in April that school would end in mid-May rather than on the 25th, Lehr said.
“We have a lot of families who are exploring alternatives,” he said. “We are clearly done as the entity that we have been, but who knows what is going to happen from here.”
“A group of people may get together and launch something else,” he said.
Lehr acknowledged the cutting two weeks from the school year is hard on parents.
“It’s not easy on parents,” he said.
“We are working with the Wells Fargo Center and we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves plenty of time to meet their needs,” he said. “Since we were able to offer the mandated requirements and get those done, we felt like the best thing to do was stop.”