16 minute read
Cuts continues on
The SIege ConTInueS Death By A Thousand Cuts
By Julie Zigoris jzigoris@mail.ccsf.edu
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Patricia Miller, Theater Arts department chair, pointed to the irony that faculty were willing to take pay cuts to save classes — and now those very faculty are facing unemployment. “This is just criminal. It's medieval. It's a siege,” Miller said.
The cuts are impacting some of the most popular departments at the school, like music and environmental horticulture and floristry. “We just kept going down and down and down, and I just shriek and howl and stop and yell about get the damned data, right,” said Madeline
Mueller, chair of the music department, whose program has been cut nearly 75% by her estimate, despite student demand.
“Now if there's a problem with these cuts will come in and talk to us individually. Oh, give me a break. You don't do that after the fact. It's just it's just pretend. And so I will. And I'll say probably what I'm saying to you, how dare you?” Mueller said.
The frustration on the part of many department chairs is that lower enrollment is being used as a rationale by the administration for course cuts, even as the very courses they’re cutting is what is making it difficult for students to complete their programs. “It’s the wrong end of the telescope,” Mueller said.
Mueller asserts it’s a schoolwide issue, pointing to the Theatre Arts department that has been reduced 52% in the last three years, according to her calculation.
“We’re getting shut down,” said Miller at the April 13 rally.
Indeed, no program at the school appears immune from the cuts, no matter the size, popularity, or subject matter. Some programs, like Older Adults and non-credit Business courses, have been cut entirely. Others, like Architecture, lost ten positions through cuts.
Other departments sustain-
ing significant cuts include: Automotive, ESL, Architecture, English, the sciences, and even business programs have all withstood cuts.
Brown, who has had his operational budget cut by more than 75%, does not think the administration is holding up their end of the bargain. “For 40 years they agreed to have this program and all of a sudden you’re not going to support it?”
The cuts prompted a March 23 resolution by the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) to oppose the downsizing. “The College is now rapidly losing its ability to provide necessary classes and job training to support the City’s economic recovery,” said the resolution, sponsored by Peter Gallotta, John Avalos, Anabel Ibanez, Li Lovett, and Carolina Morales.
With these massive cuts come major losses. Businesses not opened, citizenship not gained, languages not learned, dreams not met. The cuts disproportionately impact women and students of color, the very students that City College is charged to serve. The cuts are happening to some of the most popular departments with the most sought after classes, despite the school’s projected budget surplus.
The cuts are necessary according to the Board of Trustees in order to close the $65 million deficit in City College’s budget. Yet the Board has not responded to AFT 2121’s alternative budget that prevents any faculty eliminations.
“It all raises the question what will City College look like in the next five to 10 years? Will its role and its mission change as a result? And who will be served?” Gonzales said.
Music Department Chair Madeleine Mueller in front of her home. Julie Zigoris/The Guardsman
A protester at the March 15 rally to "Stop the Cuts." Julie Zigoris/ The Guardsman City College of San Francisco staff and union members set camp outside of Conlan Hall to protest staff cuts. May 3. Karem Rodriguez/The Guardsman
AFT2121 Vice President Mary Bravewoman, in a red jacket, reacts after hearing the decision of the board of trustees at San Francisco's City College to approve the layoffs and budget cuts. May 6. Karem Rodriguez/The Guardsman
Protest continued from page 1
Prior to the meeting, many students and faculty took to social media to voice their impassioned opposition to the proposed cuts, so much so that it sparked a campout on the City College campus as an act of civil disobedience.
When the public webinar began it did so with public comments from 118 individuals, including students and faculty, While the time allotment for comment was extended for another hour by Student Trustee Malinalli Villalobos, the effect was the same with the majority opposing the budget cuts. After public comments and debate between board members concluded the final vote came down 5-1 in favor of faculty layoffs, with Trustee member Alan Wongthe lone opposition.
The proposed cuts by the Board of Trustees, if enacted as approved, would lay off full time and part time faculty which would necessarily limit the type of classes students can take as courses require teachers to have specific qualifications to teach them. Most of the departments on high on the list of the proposed cuts range from theater, business, science and technical training, with aeronautics being the most hard hit losing all of its faculty members.
An AFT2121 member shows their proposed alternative budget to avoid faculty layoffs during the gathering to watch the online meeting of the Board of Trustees to vote over layoffs and budget cuts. May 6. Karem Rodriguez/The Guardsman
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City College's Controversial Retiree Healthcare Fund
By Ellen Yoshitsugu ellenyoshi@gmail.com
In the summer of 2020, City College of San Francisco, like many other institutions, anticipated a serious revenue shortfall caused by the COVID19 pandemic’s global economic fallout. To bridge the gap, faculty union American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 negotiated a pay cut and college administrators withdrew $21 million from a fund set aside to pay for the health care of future retirees.
Nearly two years later, the college’s oversight agencies claim that this withdrawal was a loan in need of repayment, the fund was depleted and the college’s fiscal management is in question.
The fund is known by the acronym “OPEB,” which stands for Other Post Employment Benefits. It’s an important accounting term for healthcare promised to employees in retirement. It continues to be a point of contention in the ongoing budget debates around the college’s financial future. Over the course of the past three months, this reporter has dug deep into its history, the numbers and interviewed experts to understand what’s going on.
Origin
In 2005, headlines warned that these retiree benefits loomed like a tidal wave of debt over public sector employers like cities and school districts after the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) issued a ruling known as Statement 45 that requires government employers to note accumulating future debts as liabilities on each year’s current books. This seemingly small change in accounting practices has had big fiscal consequences for government employers, including City College. With one ruling, many balance sheets across the country went from black to appearing to be in the red.
GASB 45 has pressured employers to pay for retiree healthcare twice each year. Once for former employees who are currently in retirement, and a second time to, step by step, pre-fund healthcare for all future retirees by setting up OPEB trust funds.
“In case something horrible happened to City College, a bomb dropped on it or something, then the [health care] funds would come out of it,” Susana Atwood, CPA, retired UC auditor and City College accounting instructor, said.
Confusing! Imagine two hoses running, one for this years’ bills and the other slowly filling a large bathtub against future disaster.
City College and OPEB
City College’s first attempt at setting up an OPEB trust fund ended when multiple conflicts of interest were discovered between members of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) and the fund trustees, according to 2013 court documents. The money was refunded to the college in 2011.
In 2013, the college joined the San Francisco Retiree Health Care Trust Fund (SFRHCTF), as a sub-trust alongside city employees such as police and Muni drivers, agreeing that no funds would be withdrawn until 2020, SFRHCTF documents show. Since then, the college has been making its regular contributions, and as the public has learned now, putting in some extra money as well, towards filling the OPEB “bathtub.”
OPEB Withdrawal
In September 2020, the City College Board of Trustees (BOT) put forward two resolutions, one setting restrictions on disbursements from its SFRHCTF sub-trust and one declaring an extraordinary financial circumstance and requesting $21 million to pay for retiree healthcare for FY19/20 and FY20/21. They pledged no further disbursements until the subtrust is fully funded. There is no mention of a loan or repayment.
In preparation, the college’s actuary determined that the move was fiscally prudent and the college was meeting its obligations to its future retirees. In his response, the actuary noted that since 2016 City College had contributed $16.9 million more into its OPEB trust than required and this had brought in additional investment income of $5.3 million, which together added up to more than the $21 million requested. The RHCTF, on its end, confirmed these extra payments and also approved the withdrawal. Rather than a loan, it was a refund of excess contributions.
City College demonstrated fiscal prudence in two ways. First by setting aside the extra OPEB funds, and second by carefully making sure that withdrawing funds would not harm its ability to meet its obligations to future retirees.
In an April 2021 letter, the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT) called out City College to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, alleging that the college has borrowed from its OPEB trust to balance its prior year books and has no plans to repay those funds. She also claims that in doing so the college is “fully depleting its OPEB fund.”
The FCMAT claim is false. The graph below shows the college’s OPEB sub-trust balances at the end of each quarter for the last three years, based on the RHCTF’s investment reports, clearly shows that at no time was the fund anywhere near “fully depleted."
At a recent Budget Forum Martin said the college made “a commitment to repay those funds at an accelerated rate if possible.” A recent budget plan shows the college is planning to make extra OPEB contributions in the next two years.
“No unnecessary transfers at the expense of educational opportunity” counters the AFT 2121 in its Alternative Budget, arguing against making nonrequired OPEB payments at this time.
Atwood says that both Martin and Dr. John al-Amin, vice chancellor of finance and Administration, have admitted during multiple budget conversations that the funds do not need to be repaid.
In October 2021, the ACCJC threatened the college with “future adverse action” in part because its “other post-employment benefits trust is only 18.3% funded.” The “percent funded” is a ratio of the market value of the assets in an institution’s OPEB trust to its “unfunded OPEB Liability” (the bathtub), a measure of how well it is progressing towards its full funding goal. The college only needs to show that it is on track.
The college’s actuary is the one who really knows, and his calculations found that CCSF’s OPEB fund would be fully funded by 2046, 22 years from now, which is in line with other OPEB funds in the city.
In the timeline above, the “percent funded” number, from the ACCJC’s own fiscal reports on City College, is superimposed over a timeline of OPEB related events at the college. Seeing the ACCJC’s values for this measure in the context of the college’s OPEB history reveals a number of serious discrepancies, and calls the validity of the ACCJC’s criticism on that point into question.
Medicare only covers basic medical expenses for elders and the disabled requiring extra coverage.
Following the civil rights and women’s movements in the 1960’s and 70’s, and a wave of public sector strikes, City College employees won collective bargaining rights in 1975. Regarding healthcare benefits, retired CCSF Labor Studies professor Bill Shields states, “they fought hard for them, negotiated diligently, and once obtained, have fought to keep them.”
The “percent funded” number is superimposed over a timeline of OPEB related events at the college. Ellen Yoshigutsu/The Guardsman.
Weaponizing Health
OPEB contributions are deducted from employee paychecks and in 2013 both the college’s SEIU and AFT locals forfeited their own prescription drug plans to contribute to the OPEB fund.
GASB 45 and related statements have “weaponized retiree health,” according to Shields, similar to how the US Postal Service has been required to prefund retiree benefits 75 years in advance, a requirement recently overturned by the US Congress.
Labor Campaign for Single Payer’s Cindy Young said, “Under a single payer system, health care for all seniors would be included in providing care to everyone, so it would no longer be on the college’s books.”
Pandemic Changes Students' Work Preferences
By Xian Ke @xianke; xke2@mail.ccsf.edu
City College opened in 1935 during the longest and most severe economic downturn in modern history. In more recent times, the school and its students have adapted to an uncertain health pandemic by moving classes and services online. Even as economic conditions continue to change, students have developed some lifestyle habits during the last two years that may last well into the future.
As San Francisco’s only
public community college, the school offers courses in more than 100 occupational disciplines. Among the school’s services are Career Counseling and Career Services. The former consists of career counselors who help many students at the start of their college journeys.
The latter is a team of Employment and Training Specialists who help students bridge the gap between their program of study and their next step in work and career.
A recent visit to the school’s Ocean Campus highlighted how things have been changing. Before the pandemic, a visit to the Rosenberg Library would’ve seen at least a dozen students while classes were in session.
Instead, the library had just recently reopened its in-person Collaboratory space. On a Monday afternoon, even as a sign broadcasted that library services were available, there weren’t any studious students to be seen amidst a sea of computer-equipped workspaces.
The Career Development Center on the first floor of the
Multi-Use Building had more buzz than the library. Two students were preparing to register for classes, and two staff members were available.
Guillermo Sosa has been working as a strength & conditioning coach and physical therapist at Fitness SF in Soma. He’s looking to enroll in classes in Fall 2022, and expressed preference for in-person classes. While it’s possible to learn remotely, Sosa believes that it’s more effective for him to do so in person. “It’s easier to ask questions, and also to communicate with fellow students,” Sosa said.
Amy Coffey, Assistant Director of Student Activities, was working from her on-campus office in the Student Union. She reflected on how successfully students have adapted to the pandemic, and also on the school’s plans moving forward to provide more in-person classes. “We’ve heard clearly that some students feel very strongly about being back on campus, and some students feel very strongly about not commuting and being remote,” said Coffey. “It’s not going to be business as usual.” Indeed, Coffey is excited about the potential for hybrid experiences to successfully meet student needs.
A short survey of 20 students (10 on campus and 10 online) confirmed Coffey’s observation about the diversity of student preferences. Perhaps as to be expected, those who were surveyed on campus tended to prefer being in person, and those who were surveyed through an
online class tended to prefer meeting online. Altogether, the preferences were almost exactly evenly split between in-person and remote options!
Thanh Hoang, a Clerk at the Administrative Services Department, also took time for an impromptu in-person conversation before things wrapped up for the day. Hoang has been working on campus 2 days a week as of 2022, and also serves students on Zoom during those days. Hoang is anticipating more in-person work. “I will go in 5 days a week if required,” Hoang said.
On this same afternoon, the biggest groups of students on campus were on the Athletic Field, and in the Science Hall. CCSF’s championship football team held practice, along with a rotating cast of Track & Field athletes (including from nearby high schools and the Academy of Art). Meanwhile, Chemistry students in the Science Hall were completing their Lab exercises.
While the football players are used to being in-person, the Chemistry students have lectures online – and also had online labs earlier during the pandemic.
Though Kelly Ye sometimes prefers remote work, she believes that in-person labs are more educational than virtual labs. “You learn a lot solely from
labs,” Ye said. “I thought the online lab experience for most of Covid was awful.” Chemistry Lab Manager Doug Love offered some further insight.
“Colleges can’t be accredited and have labs online,” Love said. “Jobs in natural sciences basically require being in person.”
As the pandemic has illustrated, many job roles can be productive while working remotely.
The SF Standard commissioned a 1000-person survey of registered voters with demographics representative of the SF population.
This survey showed that while working in-person was the norm for most employees in 2019, these days most employees prefer a remote component to their work.
Zach Lam is the Assistant Director of City College’s Strong Workforce Program, and also works with his Career Services team of six. His team assists students in discovering job roles that fit their interests and personality traits, and can be reached at careerservices@ccsf.edu.
Recently, Nhi Tran of the Healthcare Sector organized a well-attended virtual career fair with employer presentations, and Margaret Potts of the Business, Management & Entrepreneurship sector helped organize an online Startup Pitch Competition.
“With remote work, people can balance their lives a little
more easily, but they also miss out on connection with their colleagues,” observed Lam on a Zoom call. “Not everybody has the same comfort level with remote or in-person work.” For Lam, this question is just one of many job factors that students will have to consider and ask about during the interview process – and preferences might change over time as people’s lives evolve. As a colorful anecdote, Lam shared an example of a healthcare student who discovers that they faint at the sight of blood. The Career Services team might then guide the student toward radiology, a healthcare role that doesn’t require interacting with blood.
What will the future of work entail for City College students? “I don’t think we’re going back to 2019,” Lam predicted. “I think we’ll end up with a variety.”
Kelly Ye prepares a solution for a chemistry lab class at City College’s Ocean Campus. May 9. Xian Ke/The Guardsman
Based on survey data from The San Francisco Standard Voter Poll of 1,000 employed respondents. Xian Ke/The Guardsman
10 on-campus responses include high school students visiting campus for athletics. 10 online responses were from students of Alex Mullaney’s Data and Multimedia Journalism class. Survey by Xian Ke/ The Guardsman
