Dear City College Community,

Just over a week ago, we broke the unfortunate news that mass waitlists were building at City College, with over 1,600 students already waiting for spots in classes with no seats and over 6,000 students expected to be in the same position by the end of August. We also shared that City College’s Chancellor, David Martin, was refusing to take prompt and effective action to address this crisis.

In May, CCSF’s Board of Trustees advised Chancellor Martin to rehire the full-time faculty he laid off a year prior. Prompt action on this front is pivotal because starting this process allows departments affected by layoffs to immediately begin hiring part-time faculty in order to meet student demand.

Chancellor Martin, however, has failed to act quickly to add courses and faculty, and this is fueling a growing waitlist crisis at City College, with thousands of students waiting for seats in English, Construction, Business, & so much more. As the union of City College’s instructors, counselors, and librarians, we called on our Board of Trustees to take urgent action to hold the Chancellor accountable. We shared this message with our community, the press (see our Media Release here), & online (see our Twitter).

And now together we are making progress. The SF Examiner has reported on the growing crisis, & our Board of Trustees yesterday called for an emergency meeting tomorrow Thursday, July 27, at 7pm at Ocean Campus (MUB 140) and on Zoom. Tune in to make sure City College leaders know that our community is watching.

Chancellor Martin’s mismanagement of our schedule left thousands of students locked out of class last year, and now the problem stands to get worse. City College has the resources right now to meet student demand, and it is imperative that our leaders add the classes and faculty necessary to do so. City College students deserve nothing less.

In Unity,

AFT 2121

Enrollment at City College is strong! Currently, the average credit section at CCSF has about 22.4 students in it—up about 6% from last year. Administration estimates of FTES enrollment have also been somewhat higher than last year. If present trends continue, we estimate that CCSF is on track to have its highest average class size since the accreditation crisis.

But in specific areas, CCSF is struggling to meet student demand, in ways that impact our overall enrollment. Many of these are areas where the administration enacted layoffs last year, and have not yet recalled the lost faculty. Yesterday morning, AFT 2121 wrote the following message to its list of over 13,000 community members notifying them of the crisis and urging the Board of Trustees to take urgent action.

1. As of July 13, there are enough students on waitlists for English 1A and 1AS to fill 6 additional sections of 1A (including 3 of 1A+1AS). There are over 200 students on the waitlist for English 1A, roughly evenly split between online and in-person classes; over 100 of those students are also on waitlists for 1AS. Essentially all of the existing sections are full—there are a total of 17 seats available, including seats that are reserved for students already on thew waitlist.

2. English 1A is important because it’s the college’s most popular course and is a transfer requirement for most students, but it’s not unique. There are 166 courses, comprising 358 sections—over 20% of the sections offered at the college—where there are more students on waitlists than open seats in the course. This includes core courses in several programs where laid-off full-time faculty still have not been rehired—chemistry, physics, and business—as well as in programs like biology and architecture where laid-off faculty have been offered rehire but the college still struggles to find adequate staffing. Across all of these courses, there are 1742 students on waitlists waiting for 133 seats—even if all of those students had flexible enough schedules to pick up any empty seat, there would still be 1609 students left out in the cold.

3. This problem is only getting worse—on July 2, less than 6% of students who had signed up so far had found themselves on waitlists instead of in classes; 14% of students who have tried to enroll since July 2 have found themselves on waitlists.

4. Last year, over 20% of enrollment happened after July 13—in other words, we should be expecting over 25% growth in enrollment before the first day of classes. 332 classes—comprising 731 sections, over a third of the course offerings at CCSF—do not have room to grow by 25%. Under this scenario, over 6700 students will be unable to find the classes they need. That’s about 18% of current enrollment—in other words, most of the students we would expect to enroll between now and August will not be able to find the classes they need. (This is because while full or nearly-full classes don’t comprise a majority of classes, they do comprise a majority of enrollment.)

It’s crucial for CCSF to avoid this catastrophic loss of potential enrollment by adding sections NOW in courses that are overfull or on track to overfill. It will take time to move students from waitlists to new sections when those sections open—worse, there are dozens of courses where every section already has a full waitlist, meaning students aren’t even able to register their interest in their desired courses. We urgently need to make sure a student who tries to sign up for a course like CHEM 32, BIO 120, AUTO 50, ART 126, CNIT 106, or CS 177 tomorrow or next week isn’t turned away completely.

On June 29th, three UAW members at UC San Diego were arrested, charged with felonies, and held in jail overnight — all for allegedly chalking a building to protest UC’s refusal to fairly implement our union contracts. This comes after 67 workers at UCSD were charged with student conduct violations that could result in expulsion for protesting contract violations at a University event. UC is trying to back out of the promises they made in our contracts, and they can’t see any way out of their obligations other than intimidating workers. These arrests are an attack on our fundamental rights to free speech and collective union activity, and workers on every campus are fighting back.

SAVE THE DATE : Wednesday, July 19, UAW will be rallying outside the UC Regents Meeting at 7:40am on July 19th at the Rutter Center in Mission Bay to tell UC we will not be intimidated. We’re gathering at 7:30 at Koret Plaza– can you make it?

You can sign-up here to RSVP for the rally, and sign the petition demanding that UC drop the charges.

To learn more about this incident, read this exclusive KPBS reporting or this article by UAW 2865 president Rafael Jaime, and sign the petition demanding UC drop these unjustified charges.

City College is exceptional–with a wide range of programs from Nursing to Biotech and a tradition of academic excellence, City College is San Francisco’s crowning jewel of public education.

But right now, over 1,600 students are on waitlists for classes this fall with no seats left. Based on historical patterns, we expect that number to rise to well over 6,000 by August. See details on these numbers & a graphic here. Many of these students are waiting for openings in entry-level English courses that lead to 4-year degrees. Other students are waiting for spots in Business, Construction, and Entrepreneurship classes that lead to quality living wage jobs for our majority student of color population. The head of City College, Chancellor David Martin, has the authority and the funds to add the faculty and courses that would allow these students to enroll in their courses. But so far, he’s not listening.

We are counting on City College’s elected Board of Trustees to change that. In May, the Board of Trustees passed a Resolution encouraging Chancellor Martin to rehire all faculty laid off in May of 2022 (see our message & an SF Examiner article on the Resolution here). However, Chancellor Martin has so far refused to follow their guidance. That has to change.

The whole City College community came together to elect three new Board of Trustees in November, and we’re now calling on the entire Board to hold an emergency meeting to demand urgent action from Chancellor David Martin. Add the courses and rehire the faculty that San Francisco’s students need to change their lives at City College. The financial health of the college and the hopes and dreams of over 6,000 students are at stake. The time to act is now.

New PT Eligibility: Break in Service Extension

During the COVID shutdown, CCSF laid off scores of part-time faculty. The shrinking of the college means that many of these faculty have still not been allowed to return to work. Faculty, as well as their department chairs, have been asking for a way to bring them back in areas where CCSF needs more classes and services to meet community demand.  

In June, your AFT bargaining team negotiated an agreement to extend the re-employment period to allow laid-off part-timers to be assigned. This does not change assignment rights for anyone, PT or FT. It does not add FTE. It means that part-timers who would have been knocked off the list in Fall 2023 will still be eligible for work, if work is available.

• Part-timers now have six semesters (up from four) and a one-month grace period before they have a “break in service.” That means part-timers laid off in Spring 2020 are eligible for work in Fall 2023.
• It only applies to absences which began Fall 2020-Spring 2023. The District agreed to this only as a temporary measure to help mitigate the effects of the COVID pandemic. Absences beginning before and after that window will still be held to the current contract language of four semesters plus a one-month grace period.
• It is effective immediately, so it will impact Fall 2023 assignments.
• Updated seniority lists are posted here.

The extension of the part-time re-employment period is a win for part-time faculty and the departments who depend on them. But the larger fight is ongoing. Chancellor Martin has cut popular courses and turned thousands of students away this year from classes such as Computer Networking, English, & ESL. The college has the financial resources to fix this problem, and this agreement makes it easier to assign faculty. We urge Martin to work with other leaders and constituency groups at the college to ensure CCSF has the schedule it takes to meet community demand.

We also urge Martin to work with the same broad coalition to develop and implement a credible plan for enrollment growth, so that City College is ready to meet our communities’ needs for new degrees, better jobs, and hope.