City College of San Francisco’s faculty union and supporters gathered on the morning of Thursday, Aug. 13, at Ocean Campus for a physically distanced press conference to raise awareness about the administration cutting classes and problems with the student registration during the COVID-19 public health crisis.
Grappling with an existing budget crisis and the pandemic, the administration recently laid off part-time librarians and borrowed $20 million from the college’s retiree health trust fund to maintain a mandatory 5% reserve. The faculty union (Disclosure: this journalist is a member) was able to resist some class cuts but the budget process has not finished and the fiscal landscape is changing at the city, state and federal levels.
Despite advocacy from the union and Supervisor Gordon Mar, San Francisco Mayor London Breed did not include funds in the next budget for City College. The union will ask the supervisors to put the funding in the budget.
“CCSF is so important because public education is an extremely powerful tool for bridging gaps between class, age and race,” Josie, a student studying to be a mechanic, said at the press conference. “I support an end to class cuts. Students and faculty need a place to grow.”
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