Student (non)-involvement in budgeting

At our meeting last October when we adopted the final City College budget for 2009-2010, a number of students spoke to our Board about how eliminating the summer session would be harmful to their educational plans. In addition to the reality of facing another semester or two at City College before being able to transfer, many of these students complained that they had been unaware that the Administration had proposed cutting summer classes as a budget saving measure.

There are three or so student representatives to the College's Planning and Budgeting Council ("PBC"), the Shared Governance entity responsible for developing, approving, and recommending the budget to the Board of Trustees. How -- or if -- these students confer with student leaders and the Associated Students is unclear. Is there a robust exchange of information within the student body about the College's budget, the result of which is a true integration of student needs and desires into what the College offers in its educational and support programs? It would seem unlikely that this happens in any more that a scattered way, and that's unfortunate.

While we were listening to students complain about their lack of involvement in planning and budgeting at City College, I felt frustrated that these students were finally showing up to a College Board meeting to talk to us. Where had they been all year? With an enrollment of over 100,000 students each year, surely there are 100 or so who have the time, interest, and passion to challenge the Board of Trustees -- the elected representatives of the public -- to have a clear understanding of how the College fulfills its mission and to be able to document how they, as the Board, are serving the needs of students.

Yet, extraordinarily few students come to the College Board meetings, almost no students advocate for anything in front of the Board, and shared governance spots reserved for students often remain unfilled. I know that hearing from students would be a powerful and effective way to create change at City College; however, either by design or by history, students and the Board of Trustees have a pretty much non-existent relationship. That is a wasted opportunity for both.

At our monthly meeting last week, Chancellor Griffin noted that students want to have more involvement in the budget process and pledged to making that happen. He did not get into specifics, however. Student leaders should seize the opportunity to develop a structure for student involvement in planning and budgeting, and should present this to the College Board at our next meeting in February.

Board of Governors meet at City College

I had a chance today to welcome the Board of Governors for the California Community College System to City College. The Board is holding meetings at the College as part of its effort to travel to different community colleges around the state rather than meeting only in San Francisco. It's good exposure for the System and also for City College.

During my remarks at the luncheon, I told the Board members that they honored City College by choosing to hold meetings in San Francisco. I expressed my hope that they would have productive sessions.

Since I had the microphone (and no one was going to take it away from me!), I took the opportunity to let the members of the Board of Governors -- as well as Chancellor Jack Scott and members of his staff -- know about our recent garage sale. I said that there were three purposes to the garage sale: to raise funds to replace classes, to bring the community together in support of City College, and to make a point about chronic underfunding of public education in California. We achieved all three goals.

I also wanted to make certain that everyone in the room understood that, without full-funding for public education, we are going to continue to lag behind other states in academic achievement. While some members of the Board of Governors may feel that they are not "advocates" in the way that some of us want them to be, I felt I had to make a strong argument for the revision of Proposition 13. Eliminating the commercial property component of Prop 13 would provide a significant boost in public funds, much of which should go to public education.

Chancellor Jack Scott presented Governor Schwarzenneger with the first "Community Colleges Governor" award at the recent Association of Community College Trustees Annual Leadership Congress in San Francisco. Let's use the close relationship between Chancellor Scott and the Governor to advocate for proper funding for public education. The Governor continues to talk about his experience at Santa Monica City College as the reason for his success. It's time for the Governor to "give back" to the community colleges. City College should take a lead in showing him the best way to do that.

City College Garage Sale - October 24th

I will have more to post soon; however, I did want to make certain that I provided some background to this event and a link to the website where you can get more information about how you can participate as a vendor, donor, or volunteer.

http://www.ccsf.edu/News/Citywide_Garage_Sale/

Why are we having the "Save CCSF Classes Garage Sale and Flea Market"?

From the website:

"As the budget crisis continues in the State and, by extension, at City College of San Francisco, we would like to invite you to help restore classes and increase counseling hours by supporting the first Citywide Save CCSF Classes Garage Sale and Market. Some 800 classes are being cut during Academic Year 2009/10. Thousands of City College students are being affected by these cuts. Your participation in this community event will enable the College to restore classes and increase counseling hours during the Spring 2010 term. The goals of this event are both to raise funds for the College and to educate the public about the shortage of funding for education in California.

If additional information is requested, please contact the Marketing and Public Information Office at (415) 239-3680.

We look forward to your valuable participation in this community event to Save City College Classes for Spring Semester 2010!"

City College: A central address for good health in San Francisco

My wife is a psychologist who used to work in School-based Health Center (SBHC) working with teens. I learned a great deal from her about the importance of good health -- including mental health -- for student success. I also appreciated how valuable it is for students to have access to health care services at school.

Even before she started that job, I had expressed my interest in examining ways in which City College could play an even more significant role in the delivery of health care and health care education in San Francisco. I met with Mayor Newsom to encourage him to work with the College as part of the City's health care campaign, and I spoke with Mitch Katz, the Director of the Department of Public Health, and with Jean Fraser, then the Chief Executive Officer of San Francisco Health Plan. While all of them agreed that City College had some role to play, their focus was on instituting the Health Plan and extending health coverage to uninsured San Franciscans.

Later, I arranged a meeting between then City College Chancellor Phil Day and our current Chancellor Don Griffin (a licensed psychologist) and Belinda Lyons, Executive Director the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. While Belinda suggested that City College could help to break down cultural barriers to seeking mental health services, we did not continue to explore a partnership.

Finally, I met with members of the staff of the Student Health Center at City College. I learned about the tremendous work that the Health Center does across a range of health issues. At the time -- this was before the new Health Center opened -- they had about 10,000 visits each year from the students. While that is great, the College has an enrollment of over 100,000 people each year.

Here is my idea in brief: City College should be at the center of health care delivery and health care education in San Francisco. The Student Health Center already exists; however, only credit students can access it. There is so much more that can be done to test students for hypertension, diabetes, Hepatitis B, and other chronic conditions. The students in health-related programs can assist with the testing as part of their training. Helping people understand their health issues is an important first step in treatment.

With such a sizable and diverse student population, an educational mission, and a commitment to student success, City College could mobilize resources within health programs, graphic arts, student organizations, and related fields to educate students about good health, to encourage them to get tested, to help them understand the importance of prevention efforts, and to either deliver services directly or through expanded partnerships with government and nonprofits.

My goals are to elevate good health to a central issue at City College, to offer real-life, practical opportunities to enhance educational programs, and to support the College's focus on student success. I welcome partners in this effort, and hope to report again soon on my progress.

Creating a culture of civic engagement and nonprofit careers

Here's a statement that students and career counselors at City College should keep in mind:

"The bottom line is this: nonprofits deserve recognition as a major source of employment in this country."

That quote comes from "Nonprofits are small business employers too" that you can find on the blog of Commongood Careers at
http://www.cgcareers.org/blog/comments/nonprofits_are_small_business_employers_too/
Commongood Careers is a Boston-based, for-profit search firm that helps non-profits attract and retain employees.

While there are programs in service learning and mentorship at City College, plus a new civic engagement center sponsored by the Vice Chancellor of Student Development, Mark Robinson, these programs are not able to involve more than a very small percentage of students at City College. Without greater financial resources -- and an institutional recognition of and commitment to civic engagement -- City College students most likely will not become engaged in their community or seek out careers with nonprofits. What can we do to overcome these lost opportunities?

First, we should confer with other educational institutions about how their programs for civic engagement and nonprofit work experience are handled: what resources are devoted to these programs, how many students are served, do the nonprofits in the community feel a connection to the community college, are new ways to take on issues and problems in social service delivery being developed by community college programs?

In the Bay Area, De Anza College has an Institute of Community and Civic Engagement (see http://www.deanza.edu/communityengagement/). San Francisco State University's Urban Institute, while no longer operating as a research center on civic issues, could provide some important feedback on what works and what does not in an educational setting.

We should also seek out assistance from the Community College National Center for Community Engagement at Arizona's Mesa Community College (see http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/)

With 9,000 nonprofits in the Bay Area that could benefit from involvement of the 250,000 community college students in our region and that could offer employment to many of these students, City College should embrace civic engagement as a core institutional value.

College Board committee meetings September 10th

I am so pleased that the committee structure I proposed earlier this year -- and formally adopted by the College Board last month -- is working. While we still have some things to work out, we now have a College Board that has increased its commitment to considering important matters in public meetings with more deliberation in the past.

Tomorrow night, two committees will meet.

With its meeting starting at 6 pm at 33 Gough Street, the Facilities, Infrastructure, and Technology Committee (chaired by John Rizzo) has on its agenda:

1. Update on the Chinatown North Beach Campus Construction Project, schedule and costs
2. Update on John Adams Campus and Joint Use Facilities Construction Projects
3. Report on status of hiring Local Hiring Monitors for Chinatown and Joint Use projects
4. Discussion and possible recommendation to Board of adding a Chief Technology Officer position to the staff (committee may chose to vote and forward results to full Board of Trustees)
5. Discussion and possible recommendation to Board of maximizing parking revenues while minimizing student costs, and the possible use of a parking consultant (committee may chose to vote and forward results to full Board of Trustees)
6. Update on soccer field construction project

At 7:30 also at 33 Gough Street, the Community Relations Committee (chaired by Chris Jackson) has a full agenda, too:

1. Discussion and possible recommendation to Board of the Greater Access and Opportunity in City College’s Nursing Program resolution (committee may chose to vote and forward results to full Board of Trustees).
2. Discussion of and possible future action for a CCSF Student Ombudsman position.
3. Discussion and possible recommendation to Board of the Authorization to Propose amendments to Agreement for Exchange of Real Property (Balboa Reservoir) with the District Developing a Plaza at Ocean and Phelan and enforcing Good Faith Efforts in Local Hiring by construction contractors retained to develop the plaza and construction of the reservoir resolution (committee may chose to vote and forward results to full Board of Trustees).
4. Discussion and possible recommendation to Board of Expanding Contracts to Local Businesses resolution (committee may chose to vote and forward results to full Board of Trustees).

College Board improvements

Since my last post in May, the College Board has made progress in addressing some of the concerns about how we conduct business and the tension that the Board was causing through some of our actions.

Finally, after many months of discussion through Board meetings and committee meetings, we have a new policy governing our meetings. Among the important changes are:

• The President of the Board of Trustees now authorizes the distribution of the agenda for Board meetings, and committee chairs have this authorization for their committee meetings. While agenda preparation will continue to be done collaboratively with the Chancellor, the Board now has final say.
• There is now a formally adopted process for introduction of resolutions, for referral to committees, and for consideration of items by committee before they must be returned to the full Board for action. The goal is to enable Shared Governance and other interests to comment on proposed action by the Board in a timely manner (by the second Board meeting after referral to a committee or 45 days, whichever is longer).
• Resolutions by Board members must be submitted to the Chancellor no later than 21 days before their consideration, and draft agendas will be ready for review by the Board President no later than 14 days before the meeting and by the committee chair no later than 7 days before the meeting. Again, this is intended to establish a process that feels less rushed and more deliberate than we have had to date.

We will have more, important changes following our meeting on September 24th where, I hope, our Sunshine Policy will be adopted by the Board. I will report on those changes in another post.