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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 were
to lose its accreditation, the school 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 is set to leave.

“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 particularly 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 its own 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.

Reach the Chronicle editorial board with a letter to the editor at sfchronicle.com/submit-your-opinion.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/ccsf-accreditation- trustees-finances-19376191.php

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