The San Francisco City College newspaper, The
Guardsman, and their Editor in Chief Joe Fitzgerald are planning a state
wide action against the Student Success Task Force and their recommendations.
The SSTF was created by the California Community
Colleges Board of Governors in January of this year with the goal to improve
student success in all the community colleges in California. According to the
SSTF website the group is composed of community college leaders, faculty, students,
researchers, staff, and external stakeholders.
The proposed state wide action by Fitzgerald and the
Guardsman are the direct results from some recommendations the SSTF believes
will help students and the community colleges.
The SSTF recommendations include removing class that
do not add credit to the students transfer application, charge students with
out of state tuition fees for taking class outside of the SSTF new transfer
plan.
“Their plan would affect students who are in ESL
class,” said Fitzgerald “it would also digital learning for the elderly.”
The SFCC newspaper is not the only one against these
recommendations their Academic Senate is also against the proposed
recommendations.
Fitzgerald has taken the first step in a planned
state wide action against the SSTF. He sent out an open letter to all the EIC’s
and advisors of community colleges in California.
According to Fitzgerald, Community College
Chancellor Jack Scott selected 14 of the 20 members in the SSTF and has his own
agenda.
“For years California has been chopping community
colleges at the knees” stated Fitzgerald
The open letter to the EIC’s and advisors encourages
all community college newspapers to join together against the SSTF’s
recommendations. The letter outlines Fitzgerald’s plan beginning with a front
page editorial against the recommendations. The second step would be to have
all the community colleges upload the same editorial to their respective
websites on Dec. 7th.
The final two steps to Fitzgerald’s plan include having
all the newspapers print a “call to action” by the editorial against the
recommendations. The call to action would include a list of phone numbers and
emails for the California Board of Governors, Gov. Jerry Brown and California’s
Community College Chancellor Jack Scott and would encourage the readers to call
and email all of the listed names and state their dislike with the
recommendations. The final step would have all the CC’s send out a press
release to all the local and weekly newspapers informing them of the editorial.
According to Fitzgerald’s open letter the solutions
offered by the SSTF have “gone too far”.