RIVERA MURAL CONSERVATION
WARRIORS’ NEW HOST
SPORTS RETURN
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Vol. 171, Issue 1 | Jan. 26 – Feb. 9 | City College of San Francisco | Since 1935 | FREE | www.theguardsman.com
ESL Department Works to Increase Program Enrollment Amidst Steep Budget Cuts By Seamus Geoghegan geogheganspg@gmail.com Collaborator to The Guardsman
After budget cuts were announced in the Spring 2020 semester, the English as a Second Language (ESL) department continues to fight for increased funding and awareness of their program at City College. Chair of the ESL Department Gregory Keech has been working with the College for 30 years, and during that time hasn’t seen cuts such as the ones non-credit ESL classes have experienced. A 20 percent cut from the Spring 2020 semester resulted in programs disappearing and teachers losing jobs. “It hit the program very hard, and it hit people’s livelihoods very hard,” Keech said. “For many of our newer and wonderful instructors, they’re not working here now.” The Board of Trustees stated during their November board meeting that cuts were the result of under-enrolled programs, but Keech said he never got an explanation, “I mean, I have some guesses but I don’t think I ever really got an explanation other than that other programs are more important because they fit into the [California state] funding formula better.” While under-enrollment may be a factor, Keech argues that the college could do better to get the word out about the ESL program. “We’ve been saying that there are over 100,000 people in San Francisco that describe
themselves as limited English proficiency, and we’ve got 8,000 of them,” Keech said. COVID-19 also had a noticeable impact on registration. Non-credit ESL has lost 50 percent of its enrollment over the course of the pandemic, which Keech credited partly to lack of outreach. “We made an effort to circle back and contact students that had been enrolled in Spring-20 and we weren’t seeing them on the class list for Fall-20,” Keech said. “And many said, ‘Are you open? You mean you’re open?’” City College is making some steps to reach out to that demographic. “Chancellor Vurdien as part of his response came to an ESL town hall in the beginning of the semester and he said [he would] set aside some funding for [ESL] to have these faculty advisors and … some money for radio spots,” Keech said. “In the fall we ran radio advertisements in Spanish and Chinese. So that’s the right direction.” Keech also talked about ESL’s move to expand their social media presence, starting with Facebook. The City College ESL department Facebook page highlights spots where in-person registration is available, along with other information for people interested in the program. “One of the things that we find is that we can create community online,” Keech says. “It’s a different way of learning, but we have found that we can build community in the remote environment.” Illustration by Erin Blackwell/The Guardsman. Instagram: @blackwelldrawingfool
Pandemic Adds Ripples to Turbulent Transfer Tides By Deena Sabra deenasabra@gmail.com Collaborator to The Guardsman
The number of community college students transferring to four-year universities continues to decline, despite recent data that shows a slight increase during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The decline has been experienced locally at City College and has been declining steadily in the last five years, according to City College Banner and National Student Clearinghouse. The data shows that there were 2,138 transfers in the 2014 – 15 school year, declining to 1,888 in the 2015 – 16 school year, and down again to 1,681 during 2016 – 17. The numbers Illustration Serena Sacharoff/The Guardsman
stayed approximately the same, in 2017 – 18 with 1,606, but dropped in the 2018 – 19 school year to 1,595. Despite their best intentions, many of California’s two million community college students aren’t able to take or pass enough courses to make headway. Roughly 900,000 students fell into this category between 2010 and 2015. However, according to the Research and Planning Group, a surprising number of California’s community college students, about 300,000 during this period, had met the requirements for transfer or were just a course away from doing so and still didn’t end up transferring. The RP Group surveyed 800 California community college
students and interviewed others in depth to understand why some students managed to transfer and others didn’t. Some of the reasons cited for this were lack of money and knowledge of available financial aid, balancing family with school schedules, meeting requirements and following procedure, the complicated transfer process itself, and a lack of support from a caring adult or support network. Remedial classes and math anxiety were additional transfer setbacks noted by the Hechinger Report. Nationally, there has also been a general drop in transfer rates from two-year community colleges to four-year universities, particularly in the last 10 years. According to Pandemic continues on page 2