82% of those voting say YES: Save classes, save jobs

Dear Members,

The results from voting on our agreement to save CCSF jobs and courses are in, and they speak volumes.

82% of members who voted said YES to accepting salary reductions ranging from 4% to 11% to save City College from devastating cuts and protect access for students. Members had less than three days to vote, and the turnout for this concessionary agreement was still 79%.

The takeaway: We are willing to stand together as one to protect our jobs and our courses. The stakes of this decision were high. Our Trustees voted in March to layoff nearly 65% of the faculty, over 700 people, a move that would have closed doors to over 30,00 students a semester and fundamentally undermined CCSF’s mission, namely, to serve the essential needs of our City. From Disability Programs and Services, to ESL, to Registered Nursing, CCSF has been a bedrock of for generations of San Francisco’s immigrant, low-income, and POC residents.

This decision was not easy, and we made it as a collective with the expectation that this is only the beginning of our fight to ensure a long term solution to the chronic under-funding of our college. The CCSF Board of Trustees meets this afternoon at 4pm to make their final decision on proposed layoffs and cuts.

AFT 2121 urges our Trustees to demonstrate the same commitment to CCSF that its educators have just shown. CCSF has been long under-funded by the state: The needs of San Francisco have always far surpassed support from Sacramento.

San Francisco’s students need our trustees to step up and work with political leaders on the local, state, and federal level to bridge the gap and defend the CCSF San Franciscans deserve.

The solution to this problem cannot be the elimination of the public community college that San Franciscans depend on to access quality higher education.

We encourage everyone to attend and make public comments in support of CCSF at the virtual Trustees Meeting at 4pm today (via Zoom under ‘May 10’ on this link). When not making public comment, we also invite everyone to join us on a live stream of the Trustees meeting on AFT 2121’s Facebook page (FB event link is here).

In Solidarity,