- By Alan Wong | Special to The Examiner |
- Apr 9, 2024 Updated 3 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)
My entire family attended City College of San Francisco. It has shaped my family and the lives of so many San Franciscans.
After my father came to the United States and was laid off, he enrolled in English and culinary classes at City College to improve his language skills and chances of finding a decent job. This enabled him to become a hotel cook and sole provider for my family for two decades, and it allowed my family to live in The City with dignity.
After years of turmoil at City College, it now has the opportunity for a fresh start as it works to overcome its most recent challenges. Over the past decade, it has been plagued by financial instability and declining enrollment. However, CCSF is regaining its footing in both areas through a balanced budget with 5% reserves and increased enrollment.
Hemorrhaging student enrollment has finally been staunched. Despite a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment has stabilized and is now growing. Fall 2023 and spring 2024 enrollment were up by more than 10%.
The increase in 1,000 full-time students this academic year is an optimistic sign that our current efforts to grow enrollment are making an impact. We expect enrollment to continue climbing gradually.
Fiscal oversight and transparency have also been strengthened. City College spent down reserves for much of the last decade, faced budget deficits and lacked long-range financial planning.
These continuous challenges led me to propose reforms to the budget policy, which have subsequently been adopted. This required multi-year budget planning, mandatory monthly budget updates to the Board of Trustees, and two-thirds trustee approval before reserves could be redeployed.
This kind of planning forces City College to anticipate financial challenges over a three to five-year horizon instead of planning myopically for the following year.
For the first time since 1997, City College received a clean audit, with three independent financial audits verifying the health of the college’s general fund, parcel tax and general-obligation bond.
Furthermore, our budget is balanced with a 5% reserve. This new period of stability has largely been the result of the hard work and sacrifices of our students, faculty, classified staff, and administrators over the past several years.
Despite all this, City College is not out of the woods yet. In January 2024, although City College received an evaluation from accreditors indicating that it meets all accreditor eligibility requirements, policies, and 116 of 119 standards related to instructional programs, student services, and college operations, the report also warned City College that it must plan for long-range fiscal challenges in future budget years.
City College needs to address these concerns by March 2025, a process already underway.
The big elephant in the room is that beginning in the 2025-26 fiscal year, City College will no longer receive cost-of-living adjustments, and revenue will be frozen until City College is eligible for more funding under a revised state funding formula enacted in 2017.
To qualify for more state funding, City College must increase enrollment in line with the new formula, freeze expenses for several years or both. Assuming no more enrollment growth, City College might not be eligible to receive increased funding until the 2031-32 fiscal year. However, if City College grows 8% in annual enrollment in the coming years, it could be eligible for increased funding as soon as the 2028-29 fiscal year.
To further grow enrollment, City College has increased its marketing efforts using new digital platforms and traditional methods to communicate its affordability and array of courses for potential transfer students, mid-career professionals and lifelong learners.
The Free City College program, which uses municipal funds to directly pay student tuition, has increased access to education and encourages student enrollment. We have also prioritized scheduling the most in-demand courses supporting job training and transfers to four-year institutions.
Previously, City College tried two measures to address the impending funding freeze, including class cuts and a ballot initiative to increase revenue for the College. Both measures were highly unpopular with San Franciscans, and neither was successful. With this in mind, I have called on the City College administration to review employee attrition scenarios to curtail spending.
City College must take practical and actionable steps to ensure its long-term financial future is secure while minimizing harm to its current and future students.
To that end, I believe that City College must strike a nuanced balance between prioritizing the classes that San Franciscans need for vocational training and transferring to four-year colleges to grow enrollment, using attrition when faculty and employees leave or retire to keep spending flat, and informing potential students about the affordability and rich offerings of City College.
City College is steadfast in its mission to provide an accessible quality education, foster a supportive learning environment for our students, and remain fully accredited and open to serve all San Franciscans.
Alan Wong is the President of the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees and Co-Chair of the Free City College Oversight Committee. As a City Hall education policy advisor in 2019, Wong drafted and passed the legislation guaranteeing a decade of ‘Free City College’ for all San Franciscans.