Board Meeting Page 3
Undefeated Rams Page 8
“Artivism” Page 6
Vol. 169, Issue 1 | January 8 - January 22, 2020 | City College of San Francisco | Since 1935 | FREE | WWW.THEGUARDSMAN.COM
AFT 2121 Decries Proposal to Outsource Older Adults Courses By Caoilinn Goss cgoss2@mail.ccsf.edu
City College’s Faculty Union (AFT Local 2121) and many older adult students oppose Mayor London Breed and several city supervisors proposal to restore 17 of the 50 courses cut in November through partnership with non profits. The proposal would allocate $216,000 annually from the city’s Dignity Fund to fund courses that serve an estimated 1,000 students. Older adults are one of the fastest growing populations in San Francisco and nearly 30 percent of City College Students are over the age of 60, according to City College’s demographics data from 2017.
Union busting
Jenny Worley, president of AFT 2121, spoke out against what appears to be the defunding of public education in favor of private institutions. “We have created these programs, we have the infrastructure and the experience to run them,” Worley told SF Weekly when Mayor Breed first announced the plan. The courses would no longer be administered by the college, but by the individual non profits themselves, including Self Help for the Elderly, the Jewish Community Center, and YMCA Stonestown. The proposal does not provide assurances for the faculty whose classes have been cut. “The teachers are not being represented by a union, they don’t have a contract,” said Wynd Kaufmyn, Vice President of AFT 2121 and an engineering instructor at City College. “They’re going to have to buy their own liability insurance. They’re going to be making a lot less money and they’re not going to be accumulating toward their retirement. It’s just straight up union busting. It’s egregious.” Infographic by Claudia Drdul/The Guardsman
To many, the restructuring indicates what Peter Warfield, an older adult student and vocal organizer with Equity for Older Students, described as a “tug of war over what City College is for.” In December, Supervisor Shamann Walton proposed allocating $2.7 million from the city’s General Fund to comprehensively restore all the cut classes, yet Chancellor Mark Rocha does not support that proposal, claiming that the class cuts are part of a longer term plan to reshape the college and promote higher graduation rates. “As a College, our number one priority is graduating students, especially students of color,” Rocha stated in a Dec. 16 SF Examiner letter to the editor. “We are here to ensure that our students can continue to take the classes they need to complete their degrees, transfer to four-year universities or complete their certificates for employment.”
Ageism
Warfield believes this shift from a community resource to a junior college smacks of ageism. “The Chancellor is appearing to pit the older adults wanting their classes to continue against young students of color needing to graduate,” Warfield said. “To set one group against another is a really ugly thing to suggest.” Kaufmyn pointed to a larger systemic reason for the Chancellor’s prioritization of degree-seeking students. “This is coming down from the state. It’s the so-called Student Centered Funding Formula. This formula is different than the previous type of funding, which was really just based on enrollments. But now, they’re also going to consider how many people are graduating, how many certificates we get, and there’s other metrics that really disadvantage an urban, diverse community college,” Kaufmyn said. The Student Centered Funding Formula passed in the summer of 2018 and has resulted in budget slashes for community colleges across the state. “We as a community college have a much broader mission than that, and the state’s not going to fund it,” Kaufmyn said. “We need the city to fund it.”
BRIEF
Alan Wong Announces Candidacy for Board of Trustees By Tyler Breisacher tbreisac@gmail.com
Mar spoke highly of that work and said Wong City hall legislative aide Alan Wong was would bring his “commitment and dedication surrounded by a crowd of about 40 supporters to public service, and to public education in our including City College faculty and current and city,” to the role. former elected officials when he announced Trustees Thea Selby, John Rizzo, and Ivy his candidacy for the City College Board of Lee were present for the announcement, with Trustees on Jan.15. Lee giving a short speech in support of Wong. Wong, 32, has strong personal connections “More than anything else, Alan has shown a real to City College. He attended City College as a understanding and a commitment that City teenager and the classes he took contributed to College remains a community college,” she said. him graduating from UC San Diego at age 19. Wong said he was “excited and terrified His father took culinary classes at City at the same time” to be running for the board, College and worked as a hotel cook for two and framed the campaign as a continuation of decades. His mother took English as a second his prior work in support of City College.“I’m language (ESL) classes, and Wong said “her running for college board to continue my world had broadened” as a result of those classes. mission to help working immigrant families like Now, as a legislative aide to Supervisor my own,” he said. Gordon Mar, he has worked on bringing new A Department of Elections official said City College classes to the Sunset District, that Wong is the first person to file to run for making the Free City program permanent and the Board and that four trustees’ seats are up securing long-term funding for the college. for election this year: Alex Randolph, Ivy Lee,
Legislative aide Alan Wong files paperwork to run for a position on the City College Board of Trustees at San Francisco City Hall on Jan. 14, 2020. Photo by Franchon Smith/The Guardsman