Ballot Beat: Ruth Ferguson, Luis Zamora, and Leanna Louie Lay out their Visions as Potential Trustees
By John Schneider
jt.wildfeuer@gmail.com
On Nov. 5 San Franciscans will choose four of eight candidates to join Trustees Vick Van Chung, Anita Martinez, and Susan Solomon for four-year terms on the Community College Board.
The Guardsman interviewed three more candidates for this issue. Ruth Ferguson spoke to the disproportionate drop in City College enrollment compared to national trends through the lens of her experience as a public policy analyst. Luis Zamora described the unique value of City College for transferring students and lifelong learners and outlined what is needed to ensure its long term success. Leanna Louie detailed her qualifications to improve the college’s budget and cooperation between the Board and its community and administration.
Ruth Ferguson
Ruth Ferguson described herself as a community college graduate “from a long line of community college graduates.”
Her father arrived in California at age 18 and worked as a painter at a slaughterhouse. He’d had a “difficult childhood … and nearly flunked out of high school,” and had been told “he should never try college, that he wouldn’t be able to get in.” After graduating from Santa Rosa Junior College and transferring to University of California Santa Barbara he applied to veterinary school. He has been a veterinarian for over 30 years. Ferguson said, “he broke a cycle of poverty through community college.”
She credits her community college education with helping to make it possible for her to attend a four-year university and save thousands of dollars in the process.
She has since completed a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Washington and a master’s in public policy from University of California, Berkeley. Prior to applying to the master’s program at Berkeley, Ferguson returned to community college to complete several prerequisite classes. “I would not have gotten into my grad program,” she said, “if I hadn’t had access to that sort of affordable education.”
In the last five years, she has worked as a field representative for the California State Assembly, conducted a policy analysis for State Senator Dave Cortese, and co-founded Stop Sexual Harassment in Politics (SHIP). Now, after participating in Emerge California’s six-month training program for Democratic women to run for office, Ferguson is seeking a seat on the Community College Board “to bring stakeholders together and find reasonable, common sense solutions” to issues facing City College.
These issues include a possible decrease in funding for the Free City program from the city, an ongoing search for a long-term chancellor, a warning from the accreditation commission, and pressure to increase enrollment in anticipation of the effects of California’s Student Centered Funding Formula (SCFF). The latter fits into more complex efforts to maintain a balanced budget and avert a funding freeze in FY 2025-26, which would lead to the withholding of cost of living adjustments to the college from the state.
“Enrollment, to me, is a really interesting issue,” Ferguson said, adding that while decreasing enrollment is a national trend, “at City College it’s been quite dramatic.”
In the time since the Free City program began at City College in 2017, national enrollment in two-year public colleges decreased by 23%, while City College’s enrollment decreased by 38%. These numbers were adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the 15% difference between them suggests that other factors were at play. This last year has seen modest increases from fall 2023 to spring 2024 both nationally (by 2.5%) and at City College (by 1.3%).
Ferguson posited that while Free City “is an incredible program and … a resource that is needed,” the disproportionate decline in City College enrollment suggests that other barriers remain. She cited the “sharp increase in cost of living in San Francisco” and the “astronomical price of childcare” as potential avenues for research when trying to understand “what’s keeping people from utilizing Free City.”
City College’s arrangement with the City and County of San Francisco over funds generated by Proposition W, a 2016 transfer tax increase, is such that earmarked money can only be used for costs associated with Free City. An estimate in The Chronicle pegs currently untapped funds at $23 million. Between the threat of a funding freeze and the promise of subsidized units, the Free City program appears to be an important piece of the enrollment puzzle.
Ferguson also points to the college’s history of accreditation issues, especially as they pertain to public confidence. She said she spoke with one San Francisco resident that did not consider City College years ago when pursuing her education because “she was afraid that her credits wouldn’t be able to transfer.”
City College has maintained its accreditation for nearly 90 years. In fact, the most serious threat to it, the 2012 “show cause” order from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, ended in a judicial ruling critical of how the commission handled its case and provided the college with a way forward. This, however, can be difficult to explain to a public that has gotten used to hearing about cuts and cliffs, many of whom work while attending college classes leaving them little time to unpack the nuances of a site visit or a warning from a commission.
As a public policy analyst, Ferguson’s approach is to seek out “models of schools that have faced decline or … even more severe accreditation issues than the one the college is in currently,” adding, “the Board should be a convener to some degree … for those conversations and that sort of bridge building.”
In terms of increasing enrollment, she said this may include “finding meaningful pathways to increase dual enrollment … increase the pipeline between SFUSD and City College.” She also suggested adopting policies that reduce barriers to entry for parents by providing free childcare citing Mission College’s lab school program for enrolled students.
“With meaningful collaboration,” Ferguson said, “the college can be in a much stronger state than it is today.”
Luis Zamora
Luis Zamora is a first-generation college student who said he is running for the Community College Board to ensure that a resource that was “transformative” for him as a student “remains available for others like me for years to come.”
His experience pursuing higher education was challenged by the constraints of limited resources, his family was “just above the cut-offs where significant financial aid would be available.”
In order to ensure the City College’s longevity, Zamora plans to prioritize accountability, improve enrollment numbers, and “right the financial ship.”
Zamora is the Director of Community Relations and Executive Affairs for the City Attorney of San Francisco. He has also served as Commissioner of the Immigrant Rights Commission for San Francisco, and District Director in the California State Assembly, and volunteers as Vice President and Chair of Public Policy for the Golden Gate Business Association, the world’s first LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce.
City College is “special,” Zamora said, in part because of its role as a “community builder, offering not just courses for students looking to transfer or earn a degree, but also … courses for life-long learners.”
Marketing, Zamora said, is one area in which the college can improve its efforts. It’s advertising, he said, “needs a refresh.” He suggested increased BART advertising and taking a closer look at how course catalogs are delivered. The latter suggestion, he said, would help the college “stay true to our commitment supporting a green new deal, and not waste valuable resources the district does not have.”
He cited the Free City program as an important facet of City College’s legacy and “enduring commitment to accessible education and its economic impact,” describing the college’s economic contributions to the Bay Area as an “unsung hero.”
Consequently, Zamora said Free City “should continue to provide universal free tuition to San Franciscans regardless of full- or part-time status, course of study, educational goals, age of students, or past academic success.”
As the college approaches the 90th anniversary of its charter next year, Zamora said he would like to see the college continue for “decades to come.” That long term vision includes “growth for both students and faculty” and working with the current trustees who “love City College” to make good on their campaign mission to hire back laid off faculty.
“I will champion common sense solutions and transparency,” Zamora said, “to steer CCSF toward stability and regain the trust of our community.”
Leanna Louie
Army veteran, administrative analyst, community organizer, entrepreneur, and restaurateur Leanna Louie was encouraged to run for the Community College Board by her teenage son who recently enrolled at City College, his friends and fellow students, “community members and leaders.” After reading reports of the college’s accreditation warning she said she “did not want to sit on the sidelines and wait for the worst to happen without doing something about it.”
Louie, whose father was a City College Culinary Arts instructor, described her family as “three generations entrenched in City College of San Francisco.”
After more than a decade as an administrative analyst running the budget for the Sacramento Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services Division, army veteran Leanna Louie co-owned and managed the Mission’s Melody Cafe. Since its closure, she has patented a cleaning solution for her company Glim All, and founded the United Peace Collaborative with partner Robert Lowe, a community organization formed to respond to an increase in crime and vandalism in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While she spoke positively of the college’s course offerings and outreach through course catalogs, Louie described City College’s accreditation warning as “a crisis in leadership and
collaboration.” She said the accrediting commissions report’s mention of the need for the Board to allow the Chancellor to “implement and administer Board policies without Board interference” represents a failure of the Board to “get consensus on a three- to five-year budget plan.”
As an administrative analyst, Louie said she managed the budget “without deficit spending and borrowing from other departments.” She said she will use that knowledge and experience as a Board member “to draft, finalize, and get a three- to five-year budget plan approved before the next … audit.”
While collecting more than 1,200 signatures to qualify for the ballot, the candidate met with many people with a connection to City College. While interacting with these students, teachers, deans, and support staff, Louie said she saw “how many lives City College has touched in San Francisco,” citing 49 City College certifications.
She supports keeping the Free City Program because “it is important for low-income, and moderate-income families to access education.” Her son, a recent graduate from Washington High School, attends the college with the benefit of Free City.
Her priorities are threefold: fix the college’s budget “so that instructors are paid on time and correctly,” ensure that requirements are met to maintain “full accreditation from accrediting agencies,” and increase enrollment so that more students can “achieve their education and career goals.”
While she does not have “a personal opinion” about current trustees, she notes that the accreditation commission reports represent “a disconnect” between the Board and the college’s administrators that she finds concerning.
“I have the leadership skills,” Louie said, “to get CCSF out of the budget crisis, accreditation crisis, and enrollment crisis.”
Two Months
Election day is less than two months away, when San Francisco voters will add their voices to the rest of the country in choosing their federal representatives. Locally, elections like the Community College Board could have a meaningful impact on the city, both how it makes use of funds like those generated by Proposition W and the future of its historic institutions and programs: City College and Free City.
There are eight candidates running for the four seats opening up on the Community College Board: Aliya Chisti, Ruth Ferguson, Ben Kaplan, Leanna Louie, Heather McCarty, Julio Ramos, Alan Wong, and Luis Zamora.
The Guardsman will continue to interview candidates and provide data and context for voters and the City College community leading up to the Nov. 5 election.