San Francisco's community college system is facing an enrollment crunch as it anxiously awaits word on if its accreditation will be upheld and if city leaders will make good on their pledge to offer free tuition to city residents.
City College of San Francisco has seen its enrollment drop from more than 100,000 to less than 70,000 since 2012 due to the fight over its accreditation. The number of full-time students has fallen from 33,000 to roughly 22,000 today, and the college's administrators are facing a $35 million cut in state funding next year.
For five years now City College, the state's largest community college, has been at war with the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. The private accrediting body had threatened to revoke City College's accreditation by July 2014 due to mismanagement by the school's previous administration.
The news led to legal and legislative fights both in California and Washington, D.C., with the ACCJC being found to be in noncompliance by the federal agency that oversees it. And California's community colleges are looking to replace it with a different accrediting agency.
Amid the ongoing controversy, the ACCJC last year granted City College special restoration status to give it time to address its compliance issues. A review committee visited CCSF in October, and the full ACCJC is expected to render a decision on the institution's accreditation at its meeting in January.
"The evaluation team and the commission believe that CCSF has the ability to resolve deficiencies and meet all the standards during the restoration period," wrote ACCJC President Barbara Beno in an August 2015 letter to out City College Chancellor Susan Lamb.
Speaking at a panel about CCSF Monday, November 28 organized by Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo), whose district includes the college's main campus, gay City College board President Rafael Mandelman said he was hopeful the ACCJC would decide in the college's favor next month, "so we can put this sorry chapter behind us."
While Mandelman stressed that City College is "open and we are accredited," he also acknowledged that CCSF has "significant challenges we continue to face."
Key among them is the drop in enrollment, as well as funding, which has the college's administration looking to cut 26 percent of its class schedule over the next five years.
"I don't see how to make those cuts and preserve City College as people see it," said Mandelman, who last month won re-election to his seat on the City College board.
Voters in November did agree to increase the parcel tax that funds City College to $99 and extend it for 15 years. And they also backed another ballot measure that will impose a transfer tax on property sold for more than $5 million that city leaders had pledged to use to make City College free for city residents.
But there is talk of using the $45 million the transfer tax is expected to generate annually toward plugging the city's looming budget deficit due to rising pension costs and the defeat of a sales tax measure last month. College leaders pledged to ensure that does not happen.
Tim Killikelly, president of the college teacher union, AFT 2121, and a political science professor, said the parcel tax and "free city college are so critical for this institution moving forward."
He blamed most of the college's enrollment problems on the actions taken by the ACCJC. And he predicted students' reluctance to enroll at CCSF would vanish overnight should the accrediting body come to a favorable decision on its accreditation next month.
"Once the accreditation crisis goes away, we are ready to grow the college," said Killikelly.
Speier, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), has been a vocal advocate for CCSF. In a November 10 letter to an advisory body of the federal Department of Education, she compared the ACCJC to "Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of Spain."
On Monday she expressed optimism about City College's future.
"We have reason to be optimistic and hopeful of this great institution," said Speier from the stage of the college's Diego Rivera Theater. "It is more than open. It is stronger as a result of what has transpired."