800 Births. What Happens When Your Hospital Is Full?
If you plan to give birth in Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, or another Central Coast community, the future of Watsonville Community Hospital belongs in your birth plan.
Watsonville serves roughly 800 births each year. If labor and delivery closes, those 800 births will still happen. Other hospitals would need enough nurses, OB’s, midwives, anesthesia coverage, staffed beds, and newborn services to receive them.
This is a regional responsibility, including for the people and institutions with the most money, influence, and power to intervene.
Watsonville’s labor and delivery unit remains open. No closure has occurred. But the NICU is closed, and staff are already looking elsewhere. Our leaders need to act while there are still services to preserve.
If Dominican reaches capacity, some Santa Cruz families could face traveling over Highway 17 to deliver in San Jose. Hospitals in Monterey County will face similar pressure, pushing families farther from home.
Imagine learning, as contractions become consistent, that your planned hospital cannot accommodate you. Imagine facing that longer journey while contractions intensify or a complication develops. Imagine your own baby in utero being at risk for not receiving care in time because your local hospital is full with laboring mothers from Watsonville and Pajaro.
These are the possibilities our region needs to assess and work to prevent. Your insurance card cannot create a staffed bed. Your zip code cannot supply another labor and delivery nurse. Even the most carefully prepared birth plan depends on people and resources being available when you need them.
To our region’s wealthiest residents and most influential leaders: this belongs on your agenda. Your children, grandchildren, employees, and neighbors depend on the same regional hospital capacity. You have a personal stake in protecting it, and the influence to help. Call and email your county supervisors, state senators, and Assembly members. Tell them: Protect maternity access across our region. Intervene now to preserve labor and delivery at Watsonville Hospital. Secure immediate staffing and financial support, and require a public assessment of what closure would mean for maternity access throughout our region.
Ask them to attend the October 22 town hall with concrete commitments before the possible October 28 board vote. Who is responsible? Who is enforcing regional medical care agreements? What funding is being pursued? When will we see a plan? Dignity Health, Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente, Montage Health, and Stanford Medicine: step forward. Bring your leadership, clinical expertise, staffing partnerships, and financial resources to the table. Tell this region what you can commit.
Silicon Valley’s billion-dollar companies also have a stake. Your employees and their families live here. They give birth here. They depend on these hospitals, too.
We wholeheartedly welcome a conversation about a “Netflix Maternity Center at Watsonville Hospital,” or another partnership backed by meaningful, sustained investment. The companies within an hour’s drive have an opportunity to help protect the very families who make their success possible.
Protecting birth care in Watsonville helps protect where you and your neighbors can safely give
birth. Our access is connected, and our response must be, too.
We come with different experiences, but one heart. Please make the call. Send the email. Ask your medical group to act.
Nora Yerena
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Judge PVUSD candidates by their records
As members of the PVUSD community, including a former principal, a former trustee, a parent alliance president and a Sustainable Schools Advisory Committee member, we share the Sentinel’s desire for a respectful, effective school board. But we believe Mads Realmuto is the better choice for Trustee Area 7.
The Sentinel acknowledges Realmuto’s expertise and dedication but takes Navarro at her word that she will de-escalate conflict. After two years in office, her record has not given us the same confidence. Realmuto has earned broad support from teachers, classified staff, parents and former district leaders who know PVUSD’s challenges firsthand, including those who have worked alongside him in schools and on district committees.
Our support for Realmuto rests on his preparation and judgment. His leadership in the Special Education Community Advisory Committee, service on the Sustainable Schools Advisory and nearly two decades in public affairs offer relevant experience for the difficult decisions ahead.
The budget provides an important distinction. Navarro has defended the staffing reductions she supported. We have seen the harm caused by eliminating positions without first assessing the consequences. Removing a position does not remove the need for its work. Cuts that ultimately cost more than they save serve neither students nor the budget.
Realmuto emphasizes evaluating needs, impacts and alternatives before making reductions—and checking whether promised savings materialize. That is not resistance to difficult decisions; it is fiscal responsibility. The same scrutiny must guide school consolidation, including its educational benefits, costs and consequences.
His commitment to community engagement is already evident. He actively participates in school meetings, advocates for meaningful community involvement in school consolidation and has expanded participation in the special education Community Advisory Committee. He listens to learn and seeks to understand different perspectives to help improve our district—treating parents and community members as part of the solution.
Civility and independent oversight are not competing responsibilities. PVUSD needs trustees who work constructively with the superintendent while examining the data, testing proposals and their underlying assumptions, and holding leadership accountable for results, not simply approving its recommendations. Realmuto brings that commitment to accountability and independent judgment. The goal is not simply a quieter board, but one that makes better decisions for students. That is why we support Mads Realmuto.
Dr. Alison Hanks-Sloan, Former Principal, Aptos High School
Jennifer Schacker, Former Trustee, PVUSD
Janie Alderete Black, Rio del Mar Parent Alliance President
Artemisa Cortez, Member, PVUSD Sustainable Schools Advisory Committee
