City College of San Francisco recently experienced an unexpected $149 million shortfall in the middle of its school year. The Board of Trustees’ reaction to the shortfall was to cut nearly 100 classes, many of which had been in session for weeks.
Students whose classes were cut now cannot use those credits to graduate, and are forced to sell back their books for less than half of what they paid for them, without any increases in their financial aid, while tuition and fees are being increased. Even with fewer classes to teach, the Board of Trustees still increased the number of instructor furlough days—up to a total of 15.
CCSF is the least expensive publicly funded college in San Francisco that provides both vocational training/certificate education and transfer education for the poorest students in the Bay Area. The state of California’s attack on CCSF’s funding sends the message to the most vulnerable students that the state does not want them to go to college and has no interest in seeing them with more than low-wage, low-skilled jobs.
The Board of Trustees also heavily cut funding to the work-study program that provides poor students with part-time jobs while in school, for a flat-rate wage of $9 hour under San Francisco’s minimum wage. For many students, this is their only income. CCSF is also gutting the English as a Second Language program. The ESL program saw the most classes cut, and many of its teachers have been pink-slipped.
As one CCSF student stated, “The state is balancing its budget on the backs of students.”
The Party for Socialism and Liberation calls for full funding of education from kindergarten through college and the cancellation of all student debt. The money is there. If we simply took the $6.7 billion dollars that was spent on the war in Afghanistan just for the month of February, City College’s budget would be fixed and then some. The money is there; and the PSL demands that it be used for education, not war profiteering.
