Franklin School to Host Pozole Night to Help Local Family With Medical Bills

Thursday evening, January 12, Franklin Elementary School will be holding a special Pozole Night to help raise money toward medical bills for Santa Barbara mother Adriana Quintero, who is currently awaiting a liver transplant at UCLA Health.

School staff and parent group Padres Unidos de Franklin helped organize the event, which will include homemade pozole with all the fixings, sodas, and live entertainment from ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!, according to Franklin School Principal Casie Kilgore.

Kilgore said the Quintero family has been a part of the Franklin School community for years. Both her sons have attended the school, and their grandmother and great-grandmother also worked for Franklin in the past. As soon as staff and parents at the school heard Quintero was experiencing health issues and would be in need of a liver transplant, Kilgore said they wanted to do anything they could to help the family.

“They’ve always been such a wonderful family, willing to give to those in need,” Kilgore said, “so we wanted to be able to help them.”

Quintero is currently at UCLA Health facilities with her family awaiting a liver transplant, and Kilgore said the family’s insurance does not cover the time leading up to the procedure, leaving the family to pay out of pocket until then. Kilgore hopes this benefit will help relieve some of the financial burden.

Local parents will be preparing the homemade soup, with all the traditional fixings donated by Franklin’s 6th-grade class, and drinks donated by school staff. UCSB Arts & Lectures donated the entertainment through Viva el Arte — which already had several performances planned throughout the next week — and decided to help the school with an hour of traditional music.

The event starts at 5 p.m. and will last until 7 p.m. or until supplies run out. The suggested donation is $10 per bowl, cash only.

For more information, view the school’s Instagram page @franklinschoolsb.

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