Teachers grow friendships through daily carpools to school 

Graphic by Annie Liu

Herzman and Tyler enjoy music on the ride to school.

Waking up at 5:45 a.m. or earlier to get to school might be hard for some students to imagine. For many teachers, however, waking up this early is just the beginning of their challenges in getting to school on time in the morning, especially since so many of them live far from Saratoga.

A good example of the commuter nature of the school’s teachers is the English department, where 8 of 10 teachers live in Santa Cruz County and several regularly carpool. 

Journalism adviser and MAP 9 teacher Michael Tyler, who lives in Santa Cruz and has carpooled mainly with fellow English teachers Suzanne Herzman, Natasha Ritchie, and Amy Keys over the years, said he tries to be out the door by 6:45 each morning this year to arrive in time for his first- and second-period class.

“If it’s a good commute, then 45 minutes later, we’re pulling into the parking lot here,” Tyler said. “It’s a literal marathon each day I’m commuting. It’s 26.2 miles from [Journalism 303] to my door.”

However, the journey is filled with daily challenges. Highway 17, the road connecting Santa Clara County to Santa Cruz, has been named one of the most dangerous highways in California. It has two lanes each way that snake through hilly mountain ranges, and road conditions resulted in over 660 crashes last year. If even one lane is blocked, the hundreds of cars on the highway at any given time can come to a dramatic hault.

“There can be a series of slow trucks going 25 miles an hour who slow everyone down,” Tyler said. “If it’s a bad day and there’s an accident or some sort of stall, it can take twice the amount of time, and it makes it so [teachers] are bumping up against the start of period one or period two.”

When driving alone, Tyler listens to audiobooks to pass the time. Among the titles he’s listened to this year are “Ordinary Grace” and “This Tender Land” by William Kent Krueger and “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff. “Over the years, [listening to audiobooks] has helped me take my time because I enjoy the books so much that I don’t feel rushed,” he said.

Many of the carpooling English teachers live within a mile or so of each on the westside of Santz Cruz, creating carpooling as an enticing opportunity. On Red Days this year, Tyler frequently drives in with Herzman. Last year, he carpooled with Ritchie on Blue Days but this year, their schedules didn’t match. Carpooling days often involve conversations about the shared classes and offer the added benefit of saving hundreds of dollars in gas through the year, not to mention good company. 

“This year I have a great schedule, Red Days are my Tyler days and Blue Days are my Ritchie days, and so we often end up spending a lot of that time chatting,” Herzman said. 

Other than spending a long time driving, teachers said living far away from Saratoga makes attending school events difficult as well. The time it takes to attend school events is an often overlooked difficulty of living so far away from campus, Tyler said.

With almost two hours on the road each day, it is difficult for teachers like Tyler and Herzman to attend athletics events or other activities that occur at night. 

“When you live in (in Santa Cruz County), you can’t really be part of the life of the school in the way that you would want to,” Tyler said. “I would love to run over here and catch a basketball game occasionally. But it’s just super hard.”

Another incentive to endure a long commute is the differences in culture. Santa Cruz has a much more outdoor and beach-oriented culture and is a place where they want to spend their non-teaching hours participating in activities like surfing, mountain biking and hiking.

Another reason for teachers’ long commutes has to do with real estate prices and their ability to live anywhere close to the 95070 zip code. The median housing price in Saratoga is $3.1 million, making it the 19th most expensive zip code in America. Even Santa Cruz has a median housing price of $1.2 million, rising from $550,000 10 years ago.

“It’s not as easy for people currently in their 20s or even their 30s to buy a house,” Tyler said. “My wife and I looked to move here before, but we made the choice to stay in Santa Cruz and I don’t regret that decision.”