City College of San Francisco gets favorable ruling for now, sort of


It appears that Judge Karnow ruled in favor of CCSF, but like with all court cases, this can be appealed.  He did not rule in favor of full accreditation, but rather a restart for the process.  For now, CCSF appears to have dodged a bullet.  SF Gate reports: 



The long-awaited ruling of Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow did not invalidate a commission’s decision to revoke City College’s accreditation, as San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s lawsuit requested. The revocation has never been enacted and remains on hold.
But Karnow said the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges broke state law in four ways during its evaluations of the school in 2012 and 2013, tainting its conclusion to revoke the college’s accreditation.
The judge said the team that evaluated City College in 2013 had too few academics, and that the 19-member commission itself had some members who shouldn’t have been on it because they were selected under an old process that failed to guard against conflicts of interest. Karnow also said the commission failed to let City College respond to certain deficiencies its evaluation team found, and that the commission didn’t clearly explain those deficiencies.

“We do not know if the commissioners would have exercised their discretion differently had City College been given an opportunity to address the additional findings in writing,” said Karnow, who presided over a non-jury trial in October.
The judge emphasized that the 19-member commission, not the court, should have the last word about whether to revoke City College’s accreditation. But he said the legal violations must be corrected and that City College should be given a chance to defend itself against all deficiencies found during the evaluation.

Essentially, if you read some of the documents, it's pretty clear that the ACCJC thought that they would never be scrutinized so carefully.

You can actually review the court document here.

As with everything with American courts, nothing is settled until all appeals are finished.  We shall see if the ACCJC appeals the ruling, but this is significant as it sets a precedence that a court can actually rule on accreditation based upon California's Unfair Competition Law as noted in the SF Examiner.

The ACCJC has given them a Reinstatement provision, but that requires 100% compliance, not substantial compliance.  This court ruling might restart the process, but it still doesn't eliminate the demands by the ACCJC.  They just have to spell it out in writing.  Regardless, they got 2 years more to get into compliance.

Comments

Popular Posts