Summer classes too costly for CCSF
By: Kamala Kelkar
Examiner Staff Writer
November 5, 2009
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School is completely out next summer for the City College of San Francisco.
The board of trustees has slashed CCSF’s summer-school program for 2010 — about 900 classes — due to a $20 million cut in state funding that the school has been trying to mend, San Francisco City College Board President Milton Marks said.
Some 800 classes have already been eliminated in the current academic year — about 300 from fall and about 500 from spring — by taking away roughly 8 percent of the courses it offers from just about every discipline, Marks said.
The cuts mean fewer classes and more students in each one at a time when enrollment isn’t waning, he said.
This semester, about 36,200 students are paying $26 per credit at one of the 10 campuses or online. That’s about 2,500 more students than last year, according to the school.
“It’s quite unsettling and again I think this is because there’s so much anger about it and so much confusion,” Marks said. “I think people just kind of think things are not working out the way they want them to.”
In June, CCSF Chancellor Don Griffin suggested that donors could save a course for $6,000 and have their name attached to the course.
But the board of trustees pushed back on the idea, and it eventually dropped the naming component of the fundraising plan. In August, the college announced that the 800 classes were still available for sponsorship, without the naming rights.
Then, in a desperate move to raise money, the school decided to hold a flea market with its own items and stuff that was donated, and also collect money from vendors who participated.
The lack of funds had an overarching theme at the board of trustees meeting Oct. 29, said Peter Goldstein, vice chancellor for finance and administration.
“There was a lot of talk about how we don’t have any money,” he said. “We run a big summer program.
It’s a real loss to the community. We just don’t have enough money from the state.”
Marks said there’s no way the cuts are permanent.
“That would be a huge problem in base funding,” he said.
