AFT 2121 opposes massive cuts to CCSF!
Special Trustee Guy Lease: put away the wrecking ball!
Chancellor Lamb: stop the downsizing of CCSF!
City College Board of Trustees: stand up and defend City College and the students you were elected to serve!
AFT 2121 opposes the planned cuts of 26% to the City College of San Francisco. The administration, under unelected Special Trustee Guy Lease, announced a plan in contract talks to massively downsize the college. The public must be aware: Cuts of this magnitude will inevitably send the college into a further enrollment decline and entire programs will disappear. AFT 2121 will not standby while Guy Lease enacts a death spiral of austerity that eliminates classes, costs the jobs of a over a quarter of the current faculty, and reduces access to a quality college education for the people of San Francisco.
These cuts will have a disproportionate impact on lifelong learning, Diversity Studies and other programs that make our institution truly a community college. Downsizing the college will deepen educational inequity for communities of color and working class San Franciscans, contributing to the the growing inequality in our city between the haves and the have-nots.
Our rogue accreditor, the ACCJC, using the threat of disaccreditation in 2012, caused the college to narrow its mission. What Special Trustee Lease’s proposed cuts would do is to complete that goal. His plan will create a smaller school with a narrower educational mission, and allow expensive private colleges to instruct the students we turn away. Playing this role sure pays well: Lease makes $216,000 to work four days a week, gets his San Francisco rent paid while jetting back and forth from his home in Lake Tahoe.
AFT 2121 stands resolutely against these austerity measures. Lease must use taxpayer money to rebuild the college, not sit on massive reserves in excess of 20% of the budget over the next two years (Board policy is 5%-9%). If money is not invested in the college to rebuild enrollment, maintain access for students and pay faculty a fair wage, enrollment decline will result as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We call on Interim Chancellor Susan Lamb to stop the downsizing, support student access to education and faculty rights to fair compensation. We call on our elected Board of Trustees to assert itself and stand with the people of San Francisco who elected you. Special Trustee Lease, put away the wrecking ball. Rebuild don’t wreck!
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