Santa Cruz County affordability woes: How two Scotts Valley teachers decided to move their family to Colorado

As a mother of three children and a special education teacher at Scotts Valley High School, Cheryl Ruyle is embedded in her community. 

A Santa Cruz Mountains resident for 10 years – three in Felton and seven in Scotts Valley – and teachers union co-president, Ruyle helped lead a successful campaign to pass a parcel tax that will raise $1 million a year for Scotts Valley Unified School District. She loves teaching in the district.

So her family’s decision this spring to move to Colorado is a painful one. She and her husband, Bobby – also a special education teacher, at Raymond J. Fisher Middle School in Los Gatos – accepted jobs at the same school in Longmont, Colorado, about 25 minutes north of Boulder, for the upcoming school year. 

They’re leaving the place they’ve called home for the past decade because it’s too expensive. The family estimates they can buy a home in Colorado without having to take out a mortgage, allowing them to quadruple their monthly savings, even as they take significant pay cuts. As much as they love Santa Cruz County, between expensive property taxes, soaring home insurance costs and rising utility rates they say it’s simply become too unaffordable to live here.

“It’s heartbreaking. It feels unfair. I get emotional. I love living here so much,” Cheryl Ruyle said, tearing up. “On the other hand, it’s also a relief to leave this behind and have more breathing room.” 

The Ruyles are part of a rising number of families leaving Santa Cruz County for cheaper parts of the country. Between 2020 and 2021, Santa Cruz County’s population shrank by 4,800, mostly because 5,000 people relocated to a different state. 

The number of people leaving California as a whole has gradually increased since 2012 as the cost of housing, utilities, transportation and food have risen to among the highest in the country. Those statewide challenges are exacerbated in Santa Cruz County – where the housing crisis is among the worst in the country and rising risk of fires and natural disaster is causing home insurance rates to skyrocket.

Many of those leaving the county are families with school-aged children – a leading cause for the region’s declining public school enrollment. Most school districts in the county are projected to see enrollment decline significantly over the next decade, leading to a drop of 21.4% by 2033. 

The population loss has been a one-two punch for the region’s school districts, which have lost funding because of the declining enrollment. That has made it harder to retain teachers, some of whom are part of families with school-age children struggling to afford the region’s high cost of living. 

Many school districts have seen teachers and staff leave for higher-paying jobs in the San Jose area or farther away and have faced challenges trying to fill vacancies for math and science educators – but especially for special education teachers like the Ruyles. EDJOIN, the education job postings website, showed 34 openings Monday for special education-related jobs in the county compared to just eight openings for math teachers and seven for science teachers. 

Scotts Valley Unified had to lay off two teachers for the upcoming school year because its enrollment fell by 50 students, Cheryl Ruyle said, the first round of layoffs in years. At the same time, the district will need to fill at least four special education positions – including Ruyle’s and those of two other teachers who are moving to a cheaper area or taking a higher-paying job. 

“That’s a double whammy because special education teachers are very valuable,” said Soquel Union Elementary School District Superintendent Scott Turnbull. This year, his district had to hire third-party contractors to fill two special education positions because it couldn’t find enough full-time staff. 

Turnbull pointed out that with the Ruyles’ move to Colorado, the county is not only losing two special education teachers, but also their three school-aged children. “It’s hard to fill those positions,” he said. “So besides losing a family, losing two special education teachers, it’s really a bummer.”

How the Ruyles reached their decision

The Ruyles love their Scotts Valley home, which spreads out over about an acre with redwoods and forest views. Their kids have space to ride their bikes around the property located near Vine Hill Elementary. They bought their four-bedroom home with two accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in 2017 for $1.25 million. 

But during a camping trip to Colorado several years ago, they noticed the area had a similar vibe to California – natural landscapes and many outdoor activities – at a much cheaper cost of living. 

In Longmont and the town of Erie, about 15 minutes away, the average cost of a four- or five-bedroom home is about $600,000. Friends who have a family of five and left Santa Cruz during the pandemic for Longmont had been telling them about the experience and “really selling it,” Cheryl said. 

Yet, it wasn’t until 2022 that the couple seriously began to consider a move. That summer, the Ruyles’ home insurance provider, Nationwide, required them to cut down trees to reduce their fire risk in order to renew their policy. 

They spent $10,000 removing trees. But months later, in November 2022, Nationwide dropped them. Their only option was to take out a policy under the California FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort for homeowners in areas at high risk of fire and other environmental disasters. The change tripled their annual insurance costs, from about $3,000 a year to $9,000. 

“It was just devastating – we had put so much money into doing that,” she said. “And then it just went up in smoke for us.” 

Then a few months ago, Pacific Gas & Electric hiked its utility rates by 33%, increasing the Ruyles’ average monthly power bill from an average of about $260 up to a constant $500. 

To keep up with the rising costs of the past several years, the Ruyles started to cut back on family trips, reduce the kids’ extracurricular activities and put less money away in savings. 

“We sort of are hustling at all times to make more money,” said Bobby. “Like in the past, I’ve driven Lyft – when Olive was a baby – I had to drive to make ends meet, and we tutor quite a bit.”

Cheryl tutored full-time for several years, making about $70,000, between about five to eight years ago. Now, Cheryl tutors maybe a couple hours a month, and Bobby about four to five hours a week. Together, they make about $500 a month from tutoring. 

They also work an extra 20% beyond their full-time hours – teaching during periods when they would typically be preparing lesson plans. With the extra 20%, Bobby makes $118,000 and Cheryl makes about $86,000. 

So last month, when they saw their home’s value had appreciated enough – to between $2 million and $2.2 million – they jumped on the opportunity. They hope to sell the home for about $2 million and to clear about $1 million after paying off the rest of their mortgage. That would allow them to have enough money to have little to no mortgage in Colorado.

They found Colorado was just as desperate for special education teachers as California. They applied to jobs at Mead High School in Longmont in late March. Cheryl recalls that they applied on a Thursday, got interview requests on Friday, interviewed on Monday and had job offers in hand by Tuesday. “That was how fast the process went,” she said.

The Ruyles say the move will save them thousands. 

In Scotts Valley, the couple estimates that they have about $10,000 a month in regular expenses for basic necessities: the largest include $4,200 on mortgage, $850 on car payments, $740 on homeowners insurance, $1,400 on groceries, $1,000 on gas and $1,321 on property taxes. 

That leaves them with about $10,000 a year in savings – money that often goes toward emergency expenses, like the tree-cutting or car repairs. 

Their new salaries, while lower than what they both make in California, have a much higher purchasing power in Colorado’s cheaper cost of living economy. Cheryl will be making about $77,000 – $10,000 less than her job in Scotts Valley – and Bobby will be making about half his salary: dropping from about $118,000 to about $67,000.

In Longmont, they estimate they’ll have either no mortgage or potentially spend up to about $1,600 on monthly mortgage payments, plus $250 on homeowners insurance, $800 on groceries, $500 on gas and $309 on property taxes. 

By selling their home, they’ll also be able to pay off their cars – saving them about $10,200 annually in car payments. 

They estimate that their average monthly expenses will drop by $6,000, down to $4,000, by moving to Longmont. Considering their total annual expenses and their combined annual take-home pay of about $110,000, they expect to have about $46,000 annual savings. 

With a better economic standing in Colorado, Bobby and Cheryl won’t have to work an extra 20% at their teaching jobs and they’ll stop their tutoring side business. They’ll have more time to spend with their children and they’ll put their extra savings toward their retirement funds and their kids’ education. 

Cheryl Ruyle said when she thinks about the challenges of living in California right now, she’s reminded of a metaphor.

“If you put a frog in the boiling water and you slowly increase the temperature, it doesn’t jump out – that’s how I think we are in California,” she said. “We’re just slowly being pushed to our limits over and over again and asked to make more and more sacrifices to live in an amazingly beautiful place.” 

The family is finishing out their school year in Scotts Valley, and as soon as they find a place to live in Colorado and sell their home here, they’ll be gone. Last week, the family visited the Longmont area to look at real estate and check out the area’s schools for their kids. They saw about 50 homes in three days. Staff orientation at their new jobs starts July 31. 

Their kids – Stella, 12, Rosie, 10, and Olive, 6 – all said they’re sad to leave their friends and family, the city of Scotts Valley, and their home. But they’re also excited for the snow and for the schools. 

“There’s cheap houses that are really big and amazing that we’ll get to live in,” said Stella. “I’ve come to accept that I’m going to live there and it’s going to be amazing. I’m gonna be happy there, happier than I was here maybe.”

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