By Chronicle Editorial Board April 7, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)
In 2012, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, which determines whether institutions are meeting the standards necessary to stay in business, found City College of San Francisco to be so poorly run and to have such problematic fiscal management that it deserved to be shut down unless the community college could prove otherwise.
After five years, multiple chancellors, millions of taxpayer dollars in legal fees and a multimillion-dollar state bailout, City College managed to right the ship and its accreditation was renewed for another seven years.
One would think that this scare — which resulted in a temporary state takeover and accelerated a massive enrollment decline from which the college still hasn’t recovered — would have driven home the importance of good management and pragmatic financial stewardship. If City College loses its accreditation, it would no longer be eligible for federal funding and students’ course credits would no longer be recognized by employers or four-year colleges.
In other words, it would cease to be a school as we understand it.
Unfortunately, City College is once again tempting fate due to poor decision-making by its seven-member elected Board of Trustees.
Despite the college’s bleak budget outlook, trustees unanimously passed a resolution to restore faculty positions cut in 2022 and recently voted to pay down the school’s retiree health liability more slowly than recommended. In March, they approved more than $600,000 to send several-hundred-page course catalogs to every San Francisco household, though it’s unclear whether this is correlated with a rise in enrollment. Ironically, they did so a few months after approving a “Green New Deal” resolution.
Unsurprisingly, the accrediting commission in January sent a warning letter to City College and declined to immediately renew its accreditation, charging the board with neglecting the school’s long-term fiscal health, interfering with the chancellor’s authority and failing to follow its own policies and bylaws. The board has until March 2025 to put together a corrective plan, which it must implement by January 2027 to avoid steeper sanctions that could eventually culminate in loss of accreditation.
The news is especially disappointing given that, until recently, City College appeared to be heading in the right direction after years of turmoil and instability. In 2021, the board of trustees hired David Martin, City College’s former chief financial officer, to bring the school back from the brink of insolvency and stave off another state takeover. Martin, the school’s ninth chancellor in eight years, brought much-needed stability: He balanced the $314 million budget and helped the school avoid negative audit findings for the first time in more than two decades.
Doing so demanded excruciatingly difficult but necessary choices, including laying off staff and eliminating classes. This willingness to be the adult in the room is a key reason why we endorsed the three incumbent trustees — all of whom supported Martin — when they faced reelection in 2022.
San Franciscans instead elected challengers Anita Martinez, Susan Solomon and Vick Chung, who ran together on a union-backed slate. With Board of Trustees President Alan Wong, they’ve formed a new majority — one that often clashes with the chancellor. The accreditation commission, for example, found that the board interfered with Martin’s duties in “key instances,” including when Wong developed and administered Martin’s annual evaluation “unilaterally” instead of through the required “collective process.”
This less-than-ideal work environment undoubtedly played a role in Martin’s unexplained decision last year to step down as chancellor this June. In a secretive late-night January vote that’s since raised legal questions, the board’s four-member majority voted to not renew Martin’s contract. Trustee Murrell Green was the lone dissenter. Trustees Shanell Williams and Aliya Chisti said they left the meeting because the agenda didn’t specify that Martin’s contract was up for a vote. Both told us they want Martin to stay. Martin did not respond to our requests for comment.
The board majority’s treatment of Martin has created a “real risk … that administrators who are at the college now … will head for the hills and other people will be disinclined to come to the college,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, a former president of the City College Board of Trustees, told the editorial board.
“And that is a death spiral.”
Williams, the board’s longest-serving trustee who led the effort to recruit Martin, told us she doubts the board will be able to hire another chancellor — even an interim one — by the time Martin leaves.
“I don’t understand where we’re going to go from here,” said Williams, who isn’t seeking reelection when her term ends this year.
The board majority, however, doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to address mounting concerns. Nor does it seem willing to accept responsibility for its actions, despite being censured by City College’s Academic Senate for failing to meet accreditation standards. In fact, Martinez, the board’s vice president, sent the accreditation commission a letter pushing back on its findings, which Mandelman described in his own letter to trustees as “highly unusual and likely to raise concern.”
As of Friday, the board still had not responded to a list of questions from Mandelman, even though answers were due in February. Nor has it yet accepted offers of help from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, including a comprehensive fiscal review, technical assistance and professional development.
Based on our conversation with Susan Solomon, a retired teacher and the only trustee on the board majority who spoke with us — Board President Alan Wong agreed to an interview and then canceled without explanation — the majority faction is in denial about just how dire City College’s financial situation is.
“Falling off the fiscal cliff is a term that I have heard for over 20 years, with (San Francisco Unified School District) as well. … Often it’s been exaggerated. So we really have to look carefully at the budget,” Solomon said.
City College has seen a recent slight uptick in enrollment, but unless those figures dramatically increase — which its own multi-year budget and enrollment plan notes is unlikely — the school stands to lose money starting in the 2026-2027 fiscal year, when special state stabilization funding is set to expire.
It’s time for trustees to “make politically tough decisions,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, told the editorial board.
We agree.
Time, money and political will to save City College are running out. The state can’t afford another bailout — it’s staring down a budget deficit in the tens of billions of dollars. San Francisco has a big deficit, and after years of voter generosity — San Franciscans approved free City College tuition for residents, forgave student debt and approved numerous parcel taxes and bond measures, including funds currently being used to construct new buildings — the well may be running dry. In 2022, voters resoundingly rejected another City College parcel tax.
To ignore this reality is, as Williams put it, “gambling with students’ futures.”
The board majority says it cares about students. They need to prove it. A good place to start would be trying to convince Martin to remain as chancellor, choosing good governance over political gamesmanship and making the tough financial decisions needed to keep City College alive.
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April 7, 2024
The editorial positions of The Chronicle, including election recommendations, represent the consensus of the editorial board, consisting of the publisher, the editorial page editor and staff members of the opinion pages. Its judgments are made independent of the news operation, which covers the news without consideration of our editorial positions.
About Opinion
The editorial positions of The Chronicle, including election recommendations, represent the consensus of the editorial board, consisting of the publisher, the editorial page editor and staff members of the opinion pages. Its judgments are made independent of the news operation, which covers the news without consideration of our editorial positions.
