College Opportunity Offered at County Jail

By Marco Siler-Gonzales

City College is boosting its enrollment by finding new students in an unlikely place: the San Francisco County jail.

Since July, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said county inmates have been taking advantage of an opportunity to enroll in college courses, thanks to a partnership between City College, Five Keys Charter School and the Sheriff’s Department.

“If City College has an enrollment problem, well I’ve got a captive audience,” Mirkarimi said.

The program will offer male and female inmates the opportunity to enroll in classes taught by City College instructors in order to obtain college credit. The courses aim to lay a pathway for inmates to enter the workforce or continue their higher education after release.

“I thought that once my high school was over, I was done. But this let me realize it wasn’t bad, and I could further my education,” Tamara Washington, an inmate who just completed a child development course, said.

Washington, a Vallejo native and mother of three, had obtained her high school diploma through Five Keys Charter, and has now earned one college credit through City College. Washington is one of 83 students to complete courses since the program started in July.

Washington said the child development course has given her new insight into her experiences with her own children and an incentive to possibly pursue classes outside of custody.

“I consider myself an inmate, but a human being first. The class made me want to achieve more. This is that push to get out there and try something,” Washington said. “However life brought you here, there is always hope.”

The platform also lays out eight to 12-week courses with career pathways such as drug and alcohol certificates for recovery programs, youth worker certificates and custodial services.

The students may go on to pursue classes at City College’s Southeast center when they are released.

“Together with City College, instead from a punitive retribution model, we are doing it through a redemption model, helping people get the kind of exposure to an academic and job training field that they may have never had or stuck with,” Mirkarimi said.

An initial invitation to integrate City College into the program occurred in 2013 when the Sheriff’s Department acquired a $500,000 state grant to fund the partnership. However, City College rejected the proposition due to its already outstretched resources during the brunt of the accreditation crisis.

“We missed a lot of opportunities at that time. We just haven’t had the capacity to deal with things because we’ve been fighting to survive,” Board of Trustees President Rafael Mandelman said. “But it’s important, it’s a good pathway after they get out of jail as students who we will hope to continue on at City College and get certificates and degrees.”

The costs of classes are now funded by Five Keys Charter School.

Mirkarimi said the funding to add more classes will be evident once the courts and other agencies recognize City College’s key role in the program, as well as the already successful turnout rate with Five Keys Charter School.

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