Juicio de acreditación del City College el 27 de octubre. CCSF accreditation trial on Monday, Oct. 27, 2014. Photo James Fanucchi

By J. B. Evans

Judge Curtis Karnow listened intently Dec. 9 to closing arguments in City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s civil case brought against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC)—the governing body which has, for the past two years, attempted to revoke City College of San Francisco’s accreditation.

And now, as Karnow makes his decision, which is expected to be announced sometime in January, the 10,000 students who attend the school’s Mission campus are left to speculate about the future of a beloved and vital neighborhood institution.

“Students are still confused,” said Jorge Bell, the Mission campus dean who has also served as CCSF’s Dean of Financial Aid. “They don’t know if we’re still fully accredited. Oftentimes, I get questions of whether we’re still accredited. ‘Will credits transfer to a four-year college?’ ‘Will my credits count towards my degree?’ And the answer is: ‘Yes!’”

While many students do use the Mission campus as a means for transfer to a four-year college, Bell estimates that 75 percent of Mission campus students take noncredit classes like English as a Second Language and of those, many are Latino.

“Sixty-five percent of the students who are taking ESL classes are Latinos,” said Bell, who praised the Mission campus as an effective resource for people wanting to learn or strengthen their English language skills. “A lot of students within this neighborhood come to school here, which is what we want.”

The Mission campus is an example of an affordable higher-education institution that offers much more than an associate degree. In essence, the Mission campus is the kind of community-based education model that is becoming increasingly scarce in today’s focus on Common Core curriculum goals.

“It’s so important,” said Alan Fisher, an ESL teacher at the Mission campus and member of the faculty union American Federation of Teachers (AFT) 2121. “It’s a way for people to survive who come with very little English. It’s a way for them to learn English both for the purposes of finding and keeping a job, and the possible transfer to credited courses at City College. Then there are the intangibles. It’s not directly what they learn in class but more so, networking, meeting other people,  learning about the society and how it works, learning from their teachers, learning from their peers, having a place to go. It’s a bit of sanity for our community.”

These students view the Mission campus as an integral part of the community itself, which flies in the face of the ACCJC’s insistence on accreditation standards that demand community colleges become totally devoted to graduation rates and four-year transfers.

“ACCJC is very committed to assessing community colleges based on the number of students who complete a degree and who move on to a four-year college,” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT). “That’s a very narrow way of assessing the success or failure of a community college.”

CCSF remains in danger of permanently losing its accreditation and thus having to close its doors, but there are still many factors at play that could help the college stay accredited. Even if Karnow rules against the college, the school will still have the opportunity to complete a restoration process. If approved for restoration status in January, the school will then have two years to fulfill the ACCJC’s academic and administrative standards in order to retain its accreditation.

Celebración del nuevo año azteca afuera del City College de San Francisco campus Misión. Aztec New Year celebration outside of CCSF Mission campus. Photo Ryan Leibrich

“We remain accredited pending the outcome of the restoration process,” said Jeff Hamilton, CCSF’s vice chancellor for communications. “It’s important for people to understand that we are positioning ourselves for the future. We’re focused not just on accreditation, but on continuing to provide affordable, high-quality education for our 75,000 students.”

Regardless of whether CCSF will win its fight to keep accreditation, the Mission campus, like the rest of the college, is in desperate need of boosting its enrollment figures. In 2012, the Mission campus boasted 12,000 students. In 2014, that number dropped to 9,200.

“We need the students to come back,” said Bell. “This crisis has given us an opportunity to plan and to think more about what the community needs. The way to help City College right now is to just come and take a class.”