The Elephant in the Classroom: The Path Forward for City College
By Alan Wong
It's no secret that City College has faced more than its fair share of challenges. Even with past crises behind us and our free tuition program on firm ground, the pandemic decimated enrollment while a change in the state funding formula for community colleges created an existential crisis for City College's future.
There are no easy answers for the challenges we face – just hard decisions. But here's the good news: City College is making the hard choices we need, and after years of turmoil at City College, we're turning the page to a better and more stable future.
Following a decade of financial instability, City College has a balanced budget with 5% reserves and is on stable fiscal footing. Hemorrhaging student enrollment has finally been staunched. Despite the sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment has stabilized and is now growing. Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 enrollment are both up by over 10%. This academic year's increase of 1,000 full-time students shows our efforts to bring in more students is working, and we expect enrollment to continue climbing gradually.
But stopping the bleeding isn't enough. For most of the last decade, City College spent down reserves, faced budget deficits and lacked long-range financial planning. That's why I worked to reform City College's budget policy as soon as I joined the Board.
We now require multi-year budget planning, mandatory monthly budget updates to the Board of Trustees, and two-thirds trustee approval before using fiscal reserves. This multi-year planning forces City College to budget for financial challenges on a three- to five-year horizon instead of planning myopically for the following year. Monthly budget updates provide transparency to the public and governing board to ensure fiscal accountability. The super-majority threshold for use of reserves ensures that they'll only be used as they should be – for truly necessary and essential purposes.
For the first time since 1997, City College received a clean audit, with three independent financial audits verifying the health of the College's general fund, parcel tax and general obligation bond. This new period of stability was hard-fought and hard-won by our students, faculty, classified staff, administrators, and board over the past several years.
Even with a balanced budget, 5% reserve funds and increasing enrollment, City College is not out of the woods yet. This January, City College received an evaluation from accreditors with a warning: While the College met all accreditor eligibility requirements and policies, and met 116 of 119 accreditation standards related to instructional programs, student services and college operations, the report reaffirmed our need to plan for long range fiscal challenges in future budget years. City College needs to address these concerns by March 2025, and we're hard at work to make sure we do.
The big elephant in the room is that beginning next summer, City College revenue will be frozen until we increase enrollment even more, freeze expenses, or do a mix of both. This is due to a revised state funding formula enacted in 2017. Without adding more students, City College may not be eligible for increased funding for seven long years. But if we can keep growing enrollment by at least 8% a year, we could actually increase our funding in as soon as four years.
So what we need to do is clear – enroll more students and exercise sound fiscal judgment.
Our fiscal health depends on enrollment, and we're laser focused on keeping it growing. We're increasing marketing using a mix of new digital platforms and traditional methods to make sure students know about the incredible opportunities City College offers for potential transfer students, mid-career professionals and lifelong learners with free tuition for San Francisco residents. And with our limited resources, we're prioritizing the most in-demand courses supporting job training and transfer to four-year institutions.
We won't recruit and enroll more students by cutting the classes they need, and previous attempts to both cut classes and enroll students have failed. We also can't count on more local revenue to save us. While San Francisco voters have been very supportive of City College, the failure of the last funding measure made it clear that the College needs to focus on doing better with the resources we have.
What we can do is flatten spending in our budget in the least disruptive way by using employee attrition – only refilling positions that are essential and maximize our resources to serve students. As a result, I have requested college administrators to review employee attrition scenarios to keep spending flat.
City College must take practical and actionable steps to ensure that its long-term financial future is secure while minimizing harm to its current and future students. We need to strike a careful balance of prioritizing classes that grow enrollment, keeping spending flat through employee attrition, and making sure potential students know about the affordable, excellent offerings at City College.
Everything else is a distraction. We remain focused on City College's mission: to provide an accessible quality education and foster a supportive learning environment for our students, and to keep our doors open to serve all San Franciscans.
Alan Wong is the president of the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees and co-chair of the Free City College Oversight Committee. As a City Hall education policy advisor in 2019, Wong drafted and passed the legislation currently guaranteeing a decade of "Free City College" for all San Franciscans. He was born and raised in the Sunset District.
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