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 The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges
planned to withdraw accreditation from the school next summer,
citing a lack of financial accountability and other longstanding
problems, none directly related to educational quality.
On Thursday, San Francisco Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow issued a
preliminary injunction barring the commission from removing the
college's accreditation until a trial is held on a lawsuit filed by
City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who alleged that political bias and
conflicts of interest unlawfully influenced the agency's decision.
Lost accreditation would trigger funding cuts that would shutter the
school, San Francisco's only community college, with nine campuses,
60 academic degrees and 140 vocational programs, from nursing to
culinary arts and aircraft mechanics. Nearly 80,000 students attend
classes there.
Closing the college would be "catastrophic," Karnow wrote in a
56-page ruling.
"The impact on the teachers, faculty, and the city would be
incalculable, in both senses of the term: The impact cannot be
calculated, and it would be extreme," the judge wrote.
He plans to begin hearing Herrera's lawsuit as well as a similar
suit brought by unions representing the college's 1,500 instructors
before July. He expressed doubt, however, that the trial would
conclude before July 31, the date the college was slated to lose its
accreditation.
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Karnow rejected a separate request for an injunction from the
California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of
Teachers, saying that he did not expect the unions to win at trial.
The commission's offices are closed until next week and
representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment
from Reuters.
The U.S. Department of Education authorizes the commission to
evaluate 112 community colleges with more than 2 million California
students every six years.
In 2012, commission members and administrators at the college came
down on opposite sides of an ongoing political issue about the role
of community colleges, and Herrera's lawsuit alleges that the
commission acted to withdraw accreditation "in retaliation for City
College having embraced and advocated a different vision."
(Reporting by Ronnie Cohen; editing by Sharon Bernstein and Lisa
Shumaker)
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