Dear Members,

Today, many faculty received their first paychecks that reflect the realities of the temporary concessions, with between 4% and 11% less pay than last year. As a faculty union, we overwhelmingly came together to support a one-year agreement with the district in May, accepting temporary salary concessions in order to save our students and our college from devastating cuts. 

Why did we make these sacrifices? Over 60% of CCSF’s faculty were facing layoff last spring: 163 FT faculty received pink slips notices, and over 500 PT faculty were at risk of losing their jobs. This included more than 40% of Black faculty members. The cuts would have robbed tens of thousands of students of the educational opportunities they depend on. 

How can I check my check? Use this calculator to see the impact of this agreement on your salary, and be sure to look at the multiple tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet. These cuts are temporary and progressive, and we’ve accepted them to save courses, jobs, and frankly our bargaining power for this year’s contract negotiations. See details of the agreement, answers to frequently answered questions, and a link to the full agreement here. 

The painful agreement we reached in May is a stop-gap measure. It gives us some time to build better long-term solutions to the chronic under-funding of our college. San Franciscans have already recognized and addressed this problem for our K-12 schools, ensuring with The Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF) that SF’s general fund helps fill the gap between what the State provides and our City needs. 

It is time for our City to make the same sort of investment in CCSF. We’re fighting to win the short, medium, and long term funding our college and San Francisco deserve. 

Fired up? We invite you, right now, to record a 60 second video on why you love your students and why they deserve local support (answer question 4 here). Help us document our College in its City with our growing #CCSFintheCity mapping project. And, of course, stay tuned for next moves to build enrollment, fight for funding, and sustain our college—together! 

In unity,

Team 2121
aft@aft2121.org

Important: Fill out Your Union Return to Campus Survey

The AFT 2121 Return-to-Campus Team depends on your input, leadership, and engagement. We need to hear from you. Please fill out this short survey (click here for link) with your thoughts about COVID safety and returning to campus. This information will help us advocate and plan to keep students, employees, and our communities safe.

State Chancellor Oakley Appointed to Advise Biden Administration

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California Community Colleges statewide, has been appointed to advise the Biden administration. It’s a temporary appointment. We don’t have a firm end date, but Oakley’s press release says he will be back in “late fall.” In the meantime, the acting chancellor of the statewide system will be Oakley’s colleague Deputy Chancellor Daisy Gonzales. We do not expect Daisy Gonzales to make any major changes of direction in the statewide office.

We congratulate Chancellor Oakley on his appointment and hope that his time in Washington gives him a fresh perspective on the needs and future of California’s community colleges. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has hailed community colleges as “America’s best kept secret,” and our “most powerful engines of prosperity.” President Biden’s Families First Plan would make community college free for every American. This is a historic moment in our country for expanding access to higher education, and we encourage Chancellor Oakley to join this movement.  

The “reform” agenda Chancellor Oakley has pursued for the past 5 years in California is out of step with the times. Oakley has advocated measures such as performance-based funding and the online-education boondoggle called Calbright. You can read about the state’s policies in this article by Debbie Klein.

We share Chancellor Oakley’s stated commitment to student equity and success, but urge him to consider that expanding public education and funding is the road to achieving both. Equity and student success take increased investment, not cuts. As teachers, counselors, and librarians, we know this, and we encourage Chancellor Oakley to follow the lead of educators around the country who are pleading for more resources, not fewer. Our students–diverse and striving–deserve nothing less.

Dear Members,

Funding our CCSF is an ongoing process on a number of fronts. We have several pieces of news to report on the budget front.  There’s additional money coming in, and your bargaining team will be calling the District back to the bargaining table. We do not yet have a schedule for those negotiations.​ 

The Mayor and the Supervisors have agreed on a budget for 2021-2022 that includes a $1 million contribution to the Workforce Education Recovery Fund (WERF). City leaders also allocated an additional $500 thousand from last year’s budget to CCSF. The bulk of these funds will be for preserving courses and student services at CCSF.

$1.5 million is obviously not enough, but it is an important step forward in City leaders recognizing the viability of using WERF to provide CCSF with the local funding it requires to meet the needs of San Francisco’s residents.

When it comes to K-12, city leaders have stepped up and recognized that the state’s chronic under-funding of public education is a problem. The Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF), established in 2004 and extended in 2014, ensures that San Francisco’s general fund be used to fill in the gap between what the State provides and our City needs. Because of this funding, every SFUSD student has access to a library, a nurse, and a host of other resources that would be otherwise unavailable.

The gap in the funding the state provides CCSF is $35.6-$43 million less per year than what the college needs in order to meet the demand for classes and programs in our San Francisco communities.

All of the work you have done to stand with your fellow faculty and speak up for your job, your college, and your students has pushed City leaders to create WERF and begin contributing to it. So let’s keep it up until the Mayor and the Supervisors make the investment that our city and its residents deserve.

At the same time, we continue to work with our state and federal partners to push for as much funding as possible for not only CCSF, but our community college systems as a whole.

Our state affiliate, the California Federation of Teachers, has made substantial and exciting progress on this front in pushing California’s Governor and legislators to make increased investments in education. In the agreed upon state budget, the cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Community College apportionments is 5.07%, which represents about $6 million dollars in additional revenue for CCSF ongoing through the end of hold harmless. Hold harmless has also been extended to 2024/25, which provides for one more year of relief before enrollment numbers will impact our revenue.

While the extension of hold harmless provides CCSF with stability, there is still much work to do to correct this harmful formula and bring true stability to Community College funding. Additionally, the impacts of class cuts and then COVID on our enrollment must be repaired to ensure San Franciscans have the access they need to higher education. Your union is launching a multimedia enrollment campaign to ensure that our community knows of the breadth of opportunities our college offers. Stay tuned for more details on this.

In Solidarity,

TEAM AFT

How you can help now:
If you live in San Francisco, you should have received by now a postcard from City College encouraging folks to register for fall classes.

In addition to the mailing, faculty volunteers are distributing another 10,000 cards to transit stops, cafes, laundromats, and libraries. If you would like to pick up one or more packets of 100 cards to distribute, please meet us at Dolores Park near the Mexico Liberty Bell at Dolores and 19th Street this Sunday, July 18, 2:30-3:30 p.m.

If you can’t make it on Sunday, please contact Leslie Simon at simscha@sbcglobal.net, so she can arrange to deliver some packets to you.