Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow (right) listens to testimony from California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice Harris during the CCSF accreditation trial on Monday, Oct. 27. Photo James Fanucchi

By J.B. Evans

After months of speculation and heated debate, City College of San Francisco’s future will soon become much clearer when the city’s high-profile trial against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) is decided: either CCSF will retain its accreditation, or it will be forced to undergo a lengthy restoration process.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a civil lawsuit last year against the ACCJC, the governing body that in 2012 deemed CCSF deficient according to accreditation standards and moved to disaccredit the school. Herrera’s lawsuit accused the commission of violating a number of due process procedures.

While the resulting trial has delayed the ACCJC’s efforts to disaccredit the college, CCSF remains in peril of losing its accreditation status until a decision is reached in court. Now the fate of City College—the largest institution for higher education in Northern California—rests in the hands of one man: San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow. Having presided over a week of hearings that spanned throughout the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory, Karnow is expected to make his ruling sometime in December.

“I want to say that we’re going to make it,” said Jorge Bell, the dean of City College’s Mission campus. “I really don’t want to think negatively that we’re going to lose the accreditation. I am very hopeful.”
CCSF supporters like Bell are hoping that Karnow will rule that the ACCJC unlawfully terminated the college’s accreditation.

“I think people are confident that there’s going to be a good decision,” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), which has rallied the community. “But you just never know. First and foremost, we want the loss of accreditation set aside and to have a new accreditation process.”

Pechthalt is merely one among a throng of outraged educators, students, community activists and concerned San Franciscans.

“We have our problems,” said American Federation of Teachers (AFT) 2121 member Allan Fisher. “But we don’t merit the worst possible sanctions short of closure. If it weren’t for the court injunction, we could be closed at the moment and the people of San Francisco would be deprived of the treasure that City College is.”

Accreditation controversy
The harsh sanctions that the ACCJC imposed upon CCSF in 2012 came as a shock to many. Like all community colleges in California, CCSF is evaluated every six years by an ACCJC-sponsored “Visiting Evaluation Team.” The purpose of the team is to conduct an independent peer review examining each school according to a set of performance standards, and then draft recommendations to the ACCJC for how these schools can make improvements.

In 2006, the Visiting Team listed several recommendations for improvement at CCSF, but in 2012 the ACCJC reclassified these “recommendations” to more serious “deficiencies.”

The shift from offering “recommendations” to stating “deficiencies” allowed the ACCJC to require CCSF to “Show Cause” that the school had complied with a stringent list of performance standards, or face decertification sanctions that would include loss of accreditation.

Then, in June of 2013, the ACCJC moved to terminate CCSF’s accreditation effective July 31, 2014.

Throughout this process, many have accused the ACCJC of abusing its powers as the sole community-college accrediting agency endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education.

El Abogado de la Ciudad, Dennis Herrera. City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Monday, Oct. 27, 2014. Photo by James Fanucchi

“There have been complaints about the ACCJC for a number of years,” said Pechthalt. “Community colleges up and down the state are quite fearful of losing their accreditation, so they start doing whatever the ACCJC tells them to do.”

People involved in the college’s day-to-day activities—including administrators, staff, teachers unions and students—have alleged that the ACCJC created a climate of fear to silence dissent, that is, until a coalition of organizations united as the Save City College movement, began to fight back. Members of the Save CCSF coalition travelled to Washington D.C. to testify against the ACCJC, and in August of 2013 the Department of Education (DOE) found the ACCJC at fault concerning a number of its accreditation review procedures.

The DOE’s criticism of the ACCJC became the basis for Herrera’s legal argument against the ACCJC. Specifically, the DOE accused the ACCJC of: creating a Visiting Evaluation Team that lacked a sufficient number of academic representatives; violating due process procedures as well as failing to give CCSF adequate notice of its accreditation status; and neglecting to distinguish the important difference between “recommendations” and “deficiencies.” There were also allegations of an apparent conflict of interest, as one of the supposedly independent Visiting Team members, Peter Crabtree, is the husband of ACCJC President Barbara Beno.

Restoration in process
According to CCSF Chancellor Arthur Tyler’s office, the college has submitted a required self-evaluation to the ACCJC and is expecting a 27-member “Restoration Visiting Team” to arrive on campus this week. After this latest Visiting Team has made its recommendations, the ACCJC will vote in January on whether to extend Restoration Status and, if approved, will set a two-year deadline for fixing all remaining accreditation deficiencies.

“We do feel that there’s a path forward either way,” said Jeff Hamilton, CCSF’s vice-chancellor for communications. “However, it is important to understand that we will remain accredited pending the outcome of the restoration process.”