History
With the rich variety and abundance of independent elementary schools in Santa Cruz county, there had long been a dream of a comprehensive, non-sectarian, college-preparatory middle and high school to meet the needs of bright, motivated students in the community. Georgiana Bruce Kirby Preparatory School opened its doors in 1994 at a location in downtown Santa Cruz. In May of 2007 the school moved to its current location in the Harvey West Park area of Santa Cruz. The new campus has enabled the growth of the student population to its current 260 students.
The school is named for Georgiana Bruce Kirby, a Santa Cruz pioneer who came to the community in 1850. Ms. Kirby was a motivated and independent woman and a tireless advocate who worked vigorously toward her ideal of education and equality for all.
Georgiana Bruce was born in England in 1818 and emigrated to Boston in 1838. She became fascinated with the Transcendentalists and spent four years at the famous Brook Farm, a community based on principles of spirituality, equality and the dignity of labor. Here she encountered many great peers of her time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller.
In following years she worked with Eliza Farnham at Sing Sing prison where the two women instituted significant, though controversial, reforms in the treatment and education of the female inmates. She taught on a plantation in Missouri where her first-hand experiences with slavery confirmed her abolitionist sentiment. Traveling back north, she continued her teaching career and became active in the anti-slavery movement.
A new beginning for Georgiana Bruce was heralded by an invitation from Eliza Farnham, who had inherited several properties in California. With funding from journalist and politician Horace Greeley, Bruce arrived in the isolated community of Santa Cruz in the summer of 1850. She married local businessman Richard Kirby and had five children.
She became a leading figure in Santa Cruz and took up the causes of temperance and women’s suffrage. She wrote frequently on those topics in local and national papers and, in 1869, founded the first local society of Suffragists. She knew and collaborated with national leaders of the time including Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
Georgiana Bruce Kirby died in 1887 at the age of 68. Her memoirs, Years of Experience, were published the same year. Our school is proud to honor this pioneer, not only of the western frontier, but of the ever-present frontiers of education, enfranchisement and human dignity.