New excuse for class cuts: COVID-19 | Protecting PTers Town Hall | Prop 15

New excuse for class cuts: COVID-19

Our Board of Trustees just approved a budget providing 1200 FTEF. Cuts below 1200 FTEF are not necessary under this budget. Yet administration is cutting classes again. Departments across the the college have been ordered to cut. In the PE / Dance department alone, administration ordered around 30 classes removed.

AFT 2121 is in formal bargaining over the impacts of COVID-19 on our faculty. Administration is not free to sidestep our legally mandated bargaining process and take unilateral action. This morning, we sent a cease-and-desist letter and demanded to bargain with the administration.

Please sign on to our open letter to the Chancellor and Trustees calling for classes to be allowed to runin support of our already struggling students.

—

OPEN LETTER:

CCSF Administration, don’t use the pandemic as an excuse to cut classes out from under our struggling students!

Dear Chancellor Vurdien and Board of Trustees Members,

Yesterday afternoon the District confirmed rumors that Deans and Department Chairs have been directed to cut classes with enrollments below ten students. The District also confirmed that there is no enrollment management plan or policy that takes into account the global pandemic and economic crisis our students and community are facing. This “business as usual” action on the part of the District is reprehensible and shameful.

Cutting makes no financial sense.

Our Board of Trustees just approved a budget providing 1200 FTEF. Cuts below 1200 FTEF are not necessary under the budget the district passed.

Right now the state is providing us funding at the same dollar amount we received in 17/18, this “hold harmless”’ is intended to provide stability to our college and our students. We must extend this stability to students suffering through this crisis.

By cutting classes where students have already enrolled we send a clear message to those students: CCSF does not have what you need. Encouraging our students to look elsewhere for their educational needs does not constitute good enrollment management. At a time when students can choose any institution for their educational needs, CCSF must work to keep, not turn away, our students.

Cutting classes now represents a nominal savings on part-time faculty and their healthcare. That means padding the budget on the backs of our most vulnerable by taking away their healthcare during a global health crisis.

Cutting makes no educational sense.

Our entire college has become a remote learning environment overnight; not all of our students are equipped to succeed in remote learning environments.

We’ve already eliminated so many classes over the last few years that it’s hard for students to follow sequences and graduate – these cuts will only further drive down completion rates.

In credit, summer grades aren’t due until August 6th. Students don’t know how they did in their summer classes; they aren’t ready to enroll for Fall.

Students who have already registered for classes have signaled their pressing educational needs at a time when doing so is more challenging. We’re ignoring the most prepared among our students and abandoning those who are currently struggling to identify their educational paths in the context of crisis.

Cutting makes no planning sense.

We have no idea what registration will look like in a COVID world. This is our first full semester of this crisis. We don’t yet know what students need or how to reach out and provide services. Cutting when we don’t understand the impact is poor and alienating planning.

In non-credit, many students literally have no way to enroll yet. The college hasn’t even provided an accessible schedule or a list of available classes. Yet the administration wants to penalize students for not knowing how to navigate an entirely new and poorly executed (or non-existent) registration process.

Tom Boegel has unilaterally decided that the enrollment management plan will have no consideration whatsoever for the global pandemic and the fundamental shift the college and our students are currently making.

Enrollment management is supposed to involve responding to student demand — cutting sections and adding sections to match what’s needed. Right now CCSF is refusing to add sections, even when the waiting lists are full. Cutting without also adding isn’t enrollment management. It’s just incompetent.

We have a choice.

Students and college employees are scrambling to find child-care, health care, financial security, and to cope with the crisis. We should be there for them. Leave classes open and give students time to enroll.

We must choose to keep classes open, and fulfill our Mission Statement during this time of crisis. Our community is looking to us now more than ever; we are critical to San Francisco’s recovery. Now is the time to keep our community in Community College.

Sincerely,

Malaika Finkelstein
President, AFT 2121

Town hall on protecting faculty working part time

Join us tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. at our Town Hall meeting to address protecting our part time faculty as the college continues their very aggressive downsizing via part time faculty layoffs (cutting classes = PT layoffs, campus closures = librarian layoffs).