City College faculty have gone two years without a contract, and in that time, professors have taken pay cuts, been laid off, and are seeingclass waitlists climb into the hundreds.
City College faculty have gone two years without a contract, and in that time, professors have taken pay cuts, been laid off, and are seeingclass waitlists climb into the hundreds.
San Francisco public school educators are celebrating a new contract and raise after a nearly year-long labor negotiation — but their contemporaries at City College, where The City’s public schools often feed into, are still fighting for wage increases and administrative support.
City College faculty have gone two years without a contract, and in that time, professors have taken pay cuts, been laid off, and are seeing class waitlists climb into the hundreds. Now, AFT 2121, the union that represents them, is calling out district administration for stalling negotiations.
AFT proposed an 18% salary increase this year and another 4% next year. By contrast, the district offered 5% this year and a 4% raise next year. The union has gone three years without a raise, union spokesperson Spencer Jackson confirmed.
Board of Trustees President Alan Wong said he acknowledges that staff and faculty have made “immense sacrifices” in recent years amid rising housing and cost of living challenges and as the board begins the search for a new chancellor.
Chancellor David Martin announced that he will resign in June, and the board and faculty union are vocally divided on his decision-making during his two-year tenure.
Mary Bravewoman, president of AFT 2121, said Martin’s “mismanagement of City College’s budget and schedule” caused the high waitlists and understaffing the faculty grapples with today, but Wong asserted that the college became fiscally solvent under his leadership after years of indebtedness.
“For the first time since 1997, City College had no negative findings in our three independent financial audits for the district budget, parcel tax and bond dollars. This clean opinion over our finances and compliance over major local, state, and federal programs is a testament to the work (Martin) and the board did to strengthen fiscal oversight,” he said.
City College’s upstanding financial situation, also recognized by Supervisor and Budget Committee Chair Connie Chan last month, is why so many faculty members said the district can afford to pay its staff more.
But City College’s head football coach, Jimmy Collins, said it is clear that the district is not interested in negotiating salaries. Collins, also an AFT member, added the district’s bargaining team “was unwilling to provide the information needed to begin salary negotiations” at the most recent bargaining session.
“To my disappointment, the district did not make a counter to AFT’s (Oct. 23) salary proposal and instead proposed that the parties enter voluntary mediation. I wish the district had proposed mediation months ago,” Collins said.
The union agreed to mediation but also imposed a deadline on the district for awarding a new and fair contract.
Students of CCSF's Poetry to the People class creating signs at a faculty union rally ahead of the Thursday, Oct. 26 Board of Trustees meeting.
Allyson Aleksey
“If (that) deadline is not met, AFT will declare an impasse,” Collins said.
With mediation on the horizon, faculty members rallied ahead of a Board of Trustees meeting Thursday, demanding higher wages.
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CCSF English instructor Tehmina Khan was one of hundreds of faculty members and other employees who rallied Thursday evening. Khan and her students passed out a poem to rallyers entitled “Let’s thank the Board,” which read, in part, “Thank you for dismantling entire departments, such as the language department – we don’t need art, or French or Tagalog.”
She said her students are feeling the effect of the administration’s poor choices, from laying off tenured faculty in May to “bad faith” negotiations now.
“They laid off eight full-time faculty in my department,” Khan told The Examiner. “We have over 500 students on waitlists to get a spot in English 1A, a class everyone needs to take. It’s a prerequisite for nearly everything.”
The class is not only a requirement for a wide range of majors, but it also builds foundational reading, writing and critical thinking skills, she said.
“With so many students on the waitlist, they are now compromised in those skills. That’s because the administration is refusing to rehire laid-off faculty when the demand is clearly there,” Khan said.
Khan and other faculty are asking for wage increases that reflect the high cost of living in San Francisco.
Math Professor Ronald Page said he has had to take teaching jobs at other community colleges to make ends meet. He and his wife are expecting their first child.
“We’re trying to purchase a home, but working and living in San Francisco doesn’t seem like they can co-exist. That has to change for all faculty, for anyone working in the city,” he said.
At the Thursday board meeting, Page urged board members to consider the roughly 9% pay cut faculty members took in 2021 to avoid being laid off or having their classes eliminated.
“I think I lost somewhere around $1000 a month. To see a contract negotiation happening, where we haven’t seen a restoration of that, is unacceptable,” he said.
Cassondra Curiel, president of the union that represents The City’s public school teachers, urged the board to consider the students affected. She said many of her students in middle school rely on City College for opportunities because they can’t afford private four-year college tuition.
“I am talking about students from Black, brown and immigrant backgrounds who need the opportunities of City College but aren’t able to (pursue them) because they are being waitlisted, told to wait,” she said. “An entire population of San Franciscans can be turned away from the opportunities of growth and education.”
Curiel added optimism that a fair agreement would be reached, as it did between the San Francisco Unified School District and its teachers.
Wong is also optimistic. In a statement, he said, “I am committed to getting the college administration and labor unions to come to a fair agreement that will balance good wages and benefits for our staff and the long-term financial sustainability of the college.”
