Los Gatos School Expansion May Remove Program Supporting Low-Income Students

A summer program aimed at helping low-income students may be axed from a Los Gatos private school looking to expand its student body.

Hillbrook School applied to town officials for a permit to grow its student body. The town council voted 4-1 in favor of the request, but on the condition the campus cut back its summer hours.

Scaling back summer hours would mean the Breakthrough Silicon Valley, which supports low-income students from San Jose with extra schooling to help get them get to college, would be bumped from Hillbrook.

The school has hosted the program for five summers.

The town council turned down a request for an NBC Bay Area interview to explain why they voted the way they did.

"We talk about inequalities that exist, and opportunity gap -- I think Hillbrook has done a tremendous service for six weeks in the summer to close that gap," said Tania Wilcox with Breakthrough Silicon Valley.

Breakthrough Silicon Valley is now scrambling to find a new home while Hillbrook decides on what to do now that the town leaders have granted its request to expand.

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