This weekend, I popped into the Arts Academy of Hollywood to pick up a schedule, only to be told by staff that due to declining enrollment, they were closing that very afternoon. The school normally has about 800 students in classes at any given time, but that number had dropped to about 200 since the economic downturn began last fall, an employee explained. Even with the landlord offering a break on rent, the school couldn't afford to pay for salaries and electricity.
School owner Linda Strutz wrote in a letter to families that she plans to attend the Community Redevelopment Association meeting Friday March 20th in a last-ditch effort to ask for funding. She pleaded for families to attend in a show of support.
Feeling glum, I went home and checked my Facebook account, only to find a plea from a group called "Help Save St Stephen Catholic School in Miramar, FL."
The school will close in June if it doesn't have 300 students
registered by March 31. Every morning at 8:15, members of the school
community pray the rosary and walk the grounds, hoping for a miracle.
"The Lord hears the cry of the poor," fundraising materials say.
Then I opened my email to learn that the Adopt-A-Cat Foundation
in Lake Park -- a no-kill shelter -- was considering the unimaginable:
putting some cats to sleep. "We are in deep financial debt," wrote
founder Inga Hanley, who has a home full of three-legged and blind cats
who are otherwise unadoptable, and even sacrificed her marriage for the
critters. (Her ex-husband moved out, she says, because "he didn't want
to live in a shelter. I don't blame him.")
After a push this
past weekend, Hanley says she managed to get 100 cats adopted, but she
still needs $50,000 to keep her operation going. "My heart is
bursting," she said, after seeing all the cat lovers who came out to
help. "People, even if they couldn't adopt, left a little check -- or
some left a big check." She also directed people to the foundation's
thrift store at 804 US 1 in Lake Park, which is definitely open for
business. At this point, Hanley says, "If [the kittens and cats] have
to go down, I'll hold them, but I don't think we're going to have to."
At least not now.
