Stop the cuts! Report back and next steps.

Our CCSF Board of Trustees held a special meeting on Tuesday night to discuss the Administration’s plans for lowering budget expenditures by reducing the number of class offerings in the Fall 2019 schedule. We saw a very strong turnout of faculty from across the college, making public comment against the deep reductions to the Fall 2019 class schedule. The Grow our CCSF coalition presented initial results from their class cuts survey showing that class cuts disproportionately affect students of color. Students offered sometimes emotional testimony about being afraid they will lose access to education for themselves and their families. After an amazing, hours-long display of solidarity focused on growing our college, public comment ended and the district began their discussion of the Fall schedule.

In one moment of seemingly staged repartee between Chancellor Mark Rocha and Senior Vice Chancellor Tom Boegel, Chancellor Rocha emphasized the idea that only faculty teaching classes bring in revenue to the college. “Are you overhead?” Mark said to Tom. “Yes!” said Tom enthusiastically. They seemed to be using this as justification for massive cuts to faculty release time for coordination. Their flippant statements stood in harsh contrast to the heartfelt comments of faculty who compared the role of their coordinators to the “air traffic controller” or the “brain” of their programs. ESL instructor Kevin Cross said “Imagine what would happen without the air traffic controller…,” bringing his two fists crashing together, “That’s what our programs will look like without our coordinators.”

With the Chancellor so strongly focused on the need to have faculty in the classroom earning those much-needed revenue dollars, many of the students and faculty in the audience may have wondered at the justification for eliminating sections that showed healthy enrollment in Fall 2018.

In fact, one of the speakers during public comment was Chair Dena Johnston, who pointed out her frustration that she’d been forced to cut two of five healthy film production sections because the Cinema department’s FTEF budget had been reduced. Later, Trustee John Rizzo questioned the Administrators about why they made the decision to reduce the capacity in these healthy sections by 25% compared to their 2018 enrollment. Admin gave a complicated answer about how the Cinema degree takes too long to complete, and because there are so few “completers,” they needed to reduce the number of sections the department is allowed to run. The trustees (and the audience) were still scratching their heads afterwards, wondering how the district expects to bring in revenue when they are eliminating sections with demonstrated healthy enrollment.

When asked pointed questions about why certain sections were cut, SVC Tom Boegel punted back to the chairs, implying that it was they chairs who’d made the decision to eliminate a particular class. Trustee Tom Temprano said “We need to have our eyes open to the decisions we’re making and the impact of those decisions on students and faculty, in particular on the loss of faculty positions.” Trustee Davila and Trustee Lee both separately urged the administration to respect the faculty and to value the contributions faculty make both in and outside of the classroom.

Because faculty and students turned out en masse, because of our clear message and focus on the damage that these cuts will cause, we see the Board of Trustees asking the right questions of our administration. We need to keep up the pressure as we continue to push back against downsizing our college. Faculty and students are standing together to fight back. We are in this for the long haul, and there will be more opportunities coming soon to help. Can you join us?

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What we’ve done so far:

• Mobilized visible and impactful presence of students and faculty at each board of trustee meeting
• Held press conference at Chinatown that got good coverage and generated radio interviews
• Met with the Chronicle Editorial Board to educate them on our perspective
• Had our Op Ed published in Chronicle
• Met with individual board of trustees to fill in the gaps from information they get from Chancellor and Administrators
• Met with individual SF supervisors to alert them to our concerns and garner their support
• Supported student organizing (classroom visits, panel discussion, town hall meeting)
• Helped the Grow our CCSF Coalition collect over 1000 class cuts surveys. Please complete this survey about class reductions and share it (survey also in Chinese and in Spanish). Please distribute the survey widely as we will continue to gather this data over the coming weeks.