If we want to have a City College of San Francisco that our students and communities deserve – a true community college, not a narrower junior college – then we will need the resources to make it happen. AFT 2121 has made fighting for new funding for CCSF a top priority.
Please join our union in working to towards three solutions:
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Establishing the Workforce Education Recovery Fund (WERF)
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Passing Schools and Communities First (Prop 15)
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Taxing the wealthy to fund education in California (AB 1253 & AB 2088)
WERF
During the last year, we have given our all working to establish the Workforce Education & Recovery Fund. Unfortunately, Mayor Breed did not include WERF in her initial budget proposal. But WERF could still be funded through the Board of Supervisors’ revised budget proposal.
In our continued fight to try and get WERF established this year, we have had to lower our ask, in solidarity with all our labor and community partners who also need funding during the pandemic. As of now, we are asking SF Supervisors to establish WERF as a two-year pilot program that would provide $15 million total for fiscal years 20-21 & 21-22. This is a big compromise. But it’s important to get something in the budget this year. The budget’s add-back process has less funds available than the Mayor’s initial budget proposal.
To make sure the Supervisors include WERF in their budget proposal, please join us for Public Comment Day on Monday 24th starting at 10am: https://forms.gle/cpgKZZwmvwFqa43x6
Prop 15
Before the pandemic, we collected petitions for Schools and Communities First. With AFT 2121 members working together our union collected nearly twice our original goal, one of the highest among community college locals. We helped place it on the statewide ballot and, and it’s now called Prop 15. If passed in November it would close property tax loopholes for huge corporations and bring in $12 billion yearly our schools and communities. It would conservatively provide $20 million for CCSF per year in stable, ongoing funds.
Please sign up for Prop 15 events to help us win for our communities!
Wealth Taxes
During this pandemic, while millions of workers are laid off, frontline workers risk their lives, and teachers and students struggle, billionaires have profited. The numbers are disturbing. A recent study by the Institute for Policy Studies showed that just the top 12 billionaires alone, 5 who live in California, made a staggering $182 billion, a 22% increase from the beginning of the year! This disparity in the midst of the pandemic can not be allowed to continue.
AFT 2121 and our statewide affiliate, CFT, are working to pass two statewide wealth taxes AB 2088, and AB 1253. This summer AFT 2121 members and our elected leaders took action by joining Tax the Billionaires actions and giving public comment to the state legislature in supporting the creation of new wealth taxes to fund our schools.
Take action: Please sign this petition today – Say YES to taxing billionaires to fund our schools.
How did we get here?
California schools and community colleges have been chronically underfunded since 1978 with the passing of Prop 13. Despite our reputation as a progressive blue state, California’s funding levels are more like red states. We rank 50th among states in counselors and librarians in per pupil spending and 41st in overall spending per pupil in K-12.
Although we have greater access to community colleges because of lower tuition in California, our funding levels for community colleges are low. Here in San Francisco, with our astronomical housing costs, the funding we do get doesn’t go as far.
Schools and colleges are treading water when it comes to public funding. But the moment of reckoning is not far in the future. California is estimated to have a whopping $54 billion deficit. For this year K-12 and community colleges did not get their budgets slashed. Instead, the state gave “deferrals”. “Deferral” simply means California gave the K-12 and community college districts an IOU as a form of collateral to go to the banks to borrow money to maintain educational quality and funding. Soon we will find out how bad the economic fallout is when we see what the actual revenues are.
We will continue to work in coalition with CFA, CFT, SEIU and other community allies to make sure that the state and local budgets are not balanced on the backs of our schools, teachers, students and communities.
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