Tomorrow! Teachers vs.Tech Billionaires Kickoff

What: Campaign for pro-education, pro-labor CCSF Board & School Board candidates

When: Tomorrow, Saturday, 9/12, 10AM – 2PM 

Where: Excelsior Playground, 579 Madrid St., SF

Who: CCSF Faculty and community supporters who care about educational opportunity

RSVP here

The CCSF Board of Trustees makes decisions that impact your programs, contract, and students – board members are the ones who determine the direction of our college. We need to make sure they’re listening to students and faculty, not outside billionaires with an agenda to downsize public institutions like City College and undermine the power of unions (including our contract). 

That’s why educators across the city– and all three of the biggest unions at SFUSD and CCSF – are supporting the community-first campaigns of six homegrown candidates for CCSF Board and School Board. Why? Because billionaires behind Super PACs like Grow SF are flooding San Francisco’s local politics with money (ironically while they cry budget deficits and fight to prevent liveable salaries for educators)–this includes our College Board. We’re expecting GrowSF to spend big again this November to continue building their influence over our Board and college.

They have money, but we have commitment and strength in numbers. Step up to elect the candidates who listen to the people and not the billionaires.

Support the candidates endorsed by AFT 2121, UESF, SEIU1021 and Supervisor Connie Chan: 

• Dr. Bunny McFadden high school & community college educator, first gen college grad, Doctorate in education (EDD), nonprofit education board member, former PTA President, mother of two in SFUSD.
• Leah LaCroix, President of District 11 Democratic Club, elected committee member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee 2016-24, served on the San Francisco Youth Commission’s Free Muni for Youth campaign, Assistant Commission Affairs Manager and Social Media and Content Development Analyst for the Port of San Francisco.
• Jeremy Lee, third-generation San Franciscan, affordable housing advocate, professional experience with budgets, audits, regulatory compliance. 

More information about the candidates at the Our City College slate website.

Unmasking Billionaire Influence in SF Politics

If you’ve been following the news for the last few years, you’ve witnessed tech billionaires exerting an increasing and outsized impact on national decision-making, and San Francisco is dead center for many of those efforts. On Tuesday, CCSF students, faculty, staff and community members have a chance to take a look at billionaire political influence with a one-hour presentation from the Phoenix Project. 

Unmasking Billionaire Influence in SF Politics 

• All CCSF students, faculty, classified and community are invited
• This Tuesday, 9/15, 2:30 – 3:30 PM
• In-person, Ocean Campus, STEAM 104 and via Zoom hybrid link

Presented by Keane Chukwuneta, Phoenix Project Secretary and AFT 2121 member, and Jeremy Mack, Phoenix Project Executive Director.

Since 2020, a network of political pressure groups, funded by a handful of conservative tech and real estate billionaires, are spending millions to move San Francisco to the right. Their lavish spending furthers an agenda that benefits the wealthy and large corporations at the expense of working San Franciscans. As the project’s website describes, “They hide behind feel-good names like GrowSF, the Abundance Network and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco…. To further enrich the already wealthy, they are willing to sacrifice government funding for essential services like public transportation and schools.”

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to join this informative, 1-hour presentation. Join the conversation and bring a friend. 

Bargaining for the City College our Students Deserve

Our elected bargaining team has been busy putting together proposals on the top priorities cited by faculty: 

• Protect CCSF’s vital community programs and fight overwork by hiring the full time faculty our programs and students need 
• Protect CCSF employees and students from ICE
• Invest in CCSF educators so we can afford the City we serve 

– that means getting our salaries into the top of the Bay Ten for all faculty

We expect to address these priorities in our coming sessions on September 22nd and October 5, and we expect the District to respond by claiming the college does not have the money to invest in adequate staffing and competitive salaries (even as administrators say that we need respectable compensation to attract and retain talent). 

The problem is that the District continues to pad its budgets. In August, the Auditor of the State of California cited City College as a District that consistently “Underestimated and Underbudgeted Funds Available for Use.” AFT has been tracking this problem for the past 6 years, and it’s unfortunately getting worse. The District was $14 million off in its projections last year according to its own still-distorted numbers (it was actually $20 million off). This is a new record in the District’s recent over-budgeting. And for next year, the District has again presented a budget that doesn’t add up, with millions set aside for vacant positions and unexplained spending increases. 

In bargaining, we’ll be asking the District to show its work and pushing for sustainable agreements that give our programs, faculty, and students the support they deserve. We met last Wednesday with the District to negotiate remote work, discipline, and evaluations. We’ve been making progress on incorporating equity values and expectations into our evaluation process, strengthening assignment rights, and remote work. We believe all of these changes will be good for faculty and students. You can see the full list of proposals exchanged so far here. 

To RSVP for our next session Wednesday, September 22, from 3:30-6:30pm, reply YES to 22to this email. 

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