Open Letter to the CCSF Board of Trustees
Last week the Board of Trustees sent an unconvincing letter to the college community attempting to justify their position on the layoffs. Yesterday, your President, Malaika Finkelstein, sent this measured and persuasive counter letter to Trustees.
You can see AFT 2121’s Alternative Budget for CCSF here and a full recording of our Budget Forum, where our budget team clearly explains why there is no budgetary justification for layoffs and cuts this year.
Chancellor Martin & V.C. al-Amin are refusing to engage in transparent and consistent dialogue around the budget because this would force them to show their work and justify why education is being sacrificed without a budgetary need. CCSF’s Trustees need to step up and start asking some hard questions. The ACCJC is a discredited institution–the last time it threatened CCSF, AFT 2121 sued and won.
It is high time CCSF’s Trustees start fighting for the fully funded community college San Franciscans need and deserve.
Take action:
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Sign & share a Petition to the Trustees calling on them to reject layoffs & cuts before May 15: https://bit.ly/CCSFCommunity
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RSVP now to be part of the ‘CCSF is the Heartbeat of San Francisco’ contingent at SF Labor Council’s May Day March down Market St Sunday, May 1st: https://bit.ly/MayDayCCSF
Return to Campus updates
Last year, faculty overwhelmingly supported requiring COVID vaccination for everyone on campus. The District developed a multi-pronged approach: verify vaccination of all employees, verify for students who register for in-person classes, and check vaccination status at the doors when people come in.
The verification system is incredibly work-intensive. It’s not automated – humans have to check each bit of uploaded paperwork, follow up with the people who need to re-submit, help with tech problems, troubleshoot, and track everything. Rather than assign adequate staff, the District has been counting on a few individuals to go above and beyond. One worker we spoke to this week has been working nights and weekends and getting up at 4am so that all the student records get verified. This can’t continue.
If the college doesn’t have the capacity to verify the students who are on campus now, there will be no way to scale this up for the increased numbers we expect to schedule in-person in Fall. And even if the system worked, it wouldn’t reach non-credit students who arrive in class before they register, or the many people on campus who are not registered for in-person classes. At the same time, there is no one to check vaccination status at the doors.
Given this new situation, and the progress of the pandemic itself, it is time to check with faculty to see how you feel about working on campus and what you need for safety. Your voice matters! Are faculty comfortable on campus without a functional vaccine mandate? Or should we treat it as a health and safety hazard? If there were a gas leak, we would all understand that no one should be working in the building until it was addressed. Faculty have power through collective action and union strength — if members are united.
Please fill out this survey (https://bit.ly/AprilR2C) by 5pm next Thursday, April 28, to help your AFT 2121 Return-to-Campus team plan our next steps.
More information from your Return-to-Campus team here. Reported COVID cases on campus are here.
Layoff hearing links – blocked by Outlook email
If you have clicked on a link to watch the layoff appeal hearings and got a message that reads “The page that you are trying to access cannot be loaded.” – despair not! The link to YouTube is valid, but clicking on it through Outlook (college email) is causing an error.
Workaround: try copying the text of the link and pasting into a new window, or type the link address in manually. The problem seems to be happening when loading the link through Outlook.
Here are the links for this week’s hearings:
→ April 18-21 and April 26, 9am to 5pm each day
Stand with your union siblings for Chesa Boudin
Get Out the Vote for Chesa Boudin
Saturday, April 23rd at 9 AM
329 Noe Street, San Francisco
This event is organized by SEIU 2015 and will feature special guest speakers on why this election is so important. Download the FLIER for more info and to spread the word!
Petition pushing back on AB1705, AB705 on steroids
AB 7605 would eliminate student agency and undermine the mission of the California Community Colleges. AB 1705 would:
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Eliminate access to pre-transfer courses for most students.
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Require transfer-level English for every program, even where they are not currently required.
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Prohibit colleges from requiring students to enroll in pre-transfer level math coursework except under very limited circumstances.
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Lead to the elimination of remedial courses.
If you are interested in expressing your views in opposition of Assembly bill 1705 to this action alert put out by FACCC (Faculty Association of California Community Colleges). It will only take you a minute.
This bill has quite a bit of very well-monied support so it’s really important if you want the bill to be changed significantly or better yet paused or stopped entirely, that you make our voices heard very clearly.
Dear CCSF Community,
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