CCSF CFT/AFT Union files lawsuit

KQED reports that the CFT has filed a lawsuit to keep City College of San Francisco open.  This was confirmed on the CFT AFT website.  The Union is doing its best to preserve the existence of this institution.    

How this shapes up is unknown. You can take a look at the lawsuit in PDF form here.

Key elements of the lawsuit include:

• ACCJC in 2012 misrepresented its actions of 2006, when it made recommendations for improvement, as if it had identified deficiencies, when it had not. This was critical to the “show cause” sanction imposed on CCSF. The U.S. Department of Education (U.S. DOE) agreed that ACCJC had not distinguished clearly between recommendations to improve, and the need to cure deficiencies.
• ACCJC violated state and federal conflict of interest laws. The U.S. DOE agreed that the appointment of ACCJC president Barbara Beno’s husband, Peter Crabtree, on site evaluation teams, violated one Federal regulation, and the lack of faculty representatives on the teams violated another.
• ACCJC blocked students, faculty and the media from public meetings and destroyed public documents.
• ACCJC publicly undermined the democratically elected Board of Trustees empowered by San Francisco voters to manage the college.
• ACCJC sanctioned the college when students and faculty exercised their first amendment rights and challenged the outcome of the evaluations.
• ACCJC advised districts, including CCSF, that they had to “prefund” future liabilities for retiree health benefits, by depositing huge sums into an irrevocable trust — money steered away from instruction. This is not a legal requirement. Yet, ACCJC evaluated colleges on whether they followed this advice. This policy reflects the perspective of ACCJC Commissioners who also happen to administer such a trust.
• ACCJC illegally held a meeting where it disaccredited CCSF in June 2013, when its own policy required that it not decide CCSF’s status until January 2014.