Response to Chronicle Misinformation on the Budget

It’s political season, but even still, Nanette Asimov’s latest CCSF article stands out: it’s misleading and harmful to our college and our students.

Math Faculty Clare Heimer would have provided the following corrections had she actually been contacted for the article:

• Financial experts agree that prepaid leases should be identified as a nonliquid asset, and that is precisely what our current Board and Chancellor have done: they have correctly identified a prepaid lease as a nonspendable asset. It is located in the District’s reserves because it’s an asset, part of the Fund Balance, but it’s clearly marked as nonspendable.

• Asimov avoids discussing how the lease is classified and instead creates the false impression it’s labeled as liquid.

Asimov relies on guidance from former VC of Finance John al-Amin, notorious in our community for his lack of transparency and accuracy. Al-Amin’s budgets, just like Asimov’s article, are partisan and not frankly credible.

CCSF faculty and students in overenrolled programs, such as English, ESL, Chemistry, and ECHO, are making a fact-based case for strategically adding classes to our schedule based on student need and our mission.

City College’s mission is to serve students, not shut them out. If you believe that, then there is no case for turning away hundreds of students every semester. Our budget is finite and demands hard choices–that means prioritizing the most overenrolled programs, particularly those that are pipelines to the rest of the college, such as English 1A, Chemistry 32, and Noncredit ESL. Serving students in these classes is fiscally prudent, strategically wise, and vital for training our city’s workforce from Nurses to Firefighters.

Support your colleagues and students at next Thursday’s Board meeting in encouraging our Trustees and Chancellor to make the hard choices and smart investments necessary to take CCSF forward.