Stand Up for San Francisco, Stand Up for City College: More Intro English Classes Now!

Dear CCSF Community,

City College IS San Francisco–when you get your blood drawn, when a first responder shows up on your block, when you take your kid to daycare, when new housing is built in your neighborhood, those are City College graduates.

It’s time to stand up for our city and our students. After years of putting heart and soul into the mission of City College, faculty are calling for the negativity, the tired tropes from a decade ago to stop–it’s not a pipe dream to serve students waiting for their opportunity to become the nurses, construction workers, teachers, and firefighters that our city needs.

What our city and our college need is smart leadership and smart investment, and that starts with serving City College students.

This year alone, 237 City College students sat on waitlists and were unable to enroll in English 1A. That doesn’t count all the students who saw the full waitlists and gave up, or were forced to take English 1A late. This introductory reading and writing course is a prerequisite for vital workforce, degree, and transfer programs and important for students to take early in their college career. Shutting these students out is counter to City College’s mission and counter to our long-term financial stability.

That is why our students, faculty, and community are speaking out–over 20 San Francisco students delivered their testimony last week to our Board of Trustees on the value of English 1A and the need for more classes and teachers. This is just the beginning.

CCSF’s Board unanimously recommended that Chancellor David Martin address this crisis last summer by adding classes and rehiring the laid off faculty necessary to teach them. He refused.

There are those who want to bash San Francisco, who want to look at City College through the lens of the past, and to them, we say, listen to the students of today. Preston Johnson, “I say all that to say this, ‘We need more English 1A classes at CCSF.’”