many of us have a weakness or have family members who have suffered false. we know how economically and emotionally draining these are for families to provide care for people. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello, i am arianna. i am a student city college. i ask you guys to bring back the administrative 68 report writing you have sheriff his here and they know how to write a report. how can you take my class away? i need that class to be -- to graduate. i am studying to be a sheriff. i got into a program by law. -- by luck. without knowing how to write a report, they would teach me in the department. i'm asking for the funding to bring back my class so my siblings and my brothers and sisters can become cops in the future. thank you. >> good morning, supervisors, commissioners, trustees. i am an english faculty and chair of the women's and gender studies department at department at city college. the flagship program of women's and gender studies at city college his project survive, our college's sexual health promotion and sexual violence prevention program. one element of the work that we have done over the last 10 years has been free, noncredit self-defence classes. people of all genders and all ethnicities, of different ages and ability levels are welcome to our beautiful mission campus for an eight week saturday afternoon class. we had planned and asked our instructor to commit to teach two sections this semester. we built the spring schedule, we checked the galley proofs, and then our classes are well enrolled. and in two his actions fell victim to the budget crisis in november. administrators cancelled our entire noncredit self-defence program. who does that affect? we know our noncredit students are low income. i pulled the demographic data of the students who have taken noncredit self-defence over the last five years and 60 1% are students of color. more than 90% are women or non binary. i feel confident asserting that students who take our classes are disproportionately survivors of trauma. you will hear some former students speak today about the impact of a free noncredit self-defence class. when you hear their stories, please know that 995 students have taken the class over the last 10 years on the level of the department and we are ready to restore the second faction of self-defence in spring 2020 and men tainted beyond that. we have the students who want to take it, the space, the instructor ready to teach at, let's do this together. this is part of what your bridge funding camera store can restore , self-defence. thank you. >> hello. i have been going to city college since 2017 and i have yet to be able to take a class at southeast or evans being that i am a resident in that neighborhood. none of the classes -- they go with my requirements. i just want to push to bring back the self-defence class at the mission campus, being that i am a member of the project survive community and just bring that back to campuses. >> hello, my name is michael. i went to a college in san diego and the city college of san francisco is completely different. i have learned so much here, but i'm concerned what is going on today too. i am also a student worker for the learning assistance center which has taken a 20% cut. it has been awful for a lot of students because we have cuts to ours. some students can't come to cs as much. second of all, which i'm really proud of, i am a peer educator for project survive. we are a sexual violence prevention program. what's really, really concerning his we lost our self-defence class and this class is really important because we have to give people hope, that they can take care of themselves, they can build life skills to protect themselves to the point that they can even save their lives and even others as well. when i look into crimes, i think crime is a reflection of cries for help. we don't have the resources and we don't have education, but when you provide the education for people, it gives them the beacon of hope that they can find their voice and they can take themselves out of hardships in their life. that is probably going to be robbed away. that is scary and that will have a huge detrimental impact for our future. we cannot allow that to happen. we cannot allow to let some groups of people -- thank you. >> good morning. i stand here as a san franciscan and a product of sfusd. i'm glad that students are part of this conversation, and the fact they are coming into city college, also junior college doesn't work. i went to skyline grade school, by the way, however, i did not see the opportunities that i needed there. also, i am a homeless student, as a student that wasn't working as much. going to city college i have found my path and i can start a career now. i can work on other things that i love, also the safety of our students, especially our sfusd students. that free class is available for people 14 and over. also, mothers are taking that course. she is also huge member of our martial arts community in san francisco. there is a picture of her up at navarro that has been in the city for years and closed down and miraculously came back up on geneva if anybody does need classes out there, they should be at least $30 a session. please bring it back for the safety of our sfusd students, for the safety of our mothers, and the fact they can teach their children how to defend themselves as well. >> hello. i am a faculty in the older adult and continuing education, as well as a student at city college. i would like to push a few ideas in terms of the frustration you have experienced today in terms of information. it seems that is the problem generally at city college. i would like you, as the leaders of the city, to help us find the information we need. a little bit of information i have about the older adult program, which i would like to just point out is also a community of people that most of the time is underrepresented and you can see, if you look into the crowd, there are a lot of us here that would like to be represented by the community college. i understand the state is pushing for graduation transfers and transfers to universities and all that stuff, but there are other communities that people are trying to get out of with low-paying service jobs to high paying union jobs. older adults that have to take care of themselves and build their own communities, and by such, save this city and costs -- and cause -- because of injuries, but also loneliness and social networks. this is a critical part of city college is to create community. the classes that have been cut at fort mason had hundreds of people going through them. and, in fact, they are self-funded. it is not even a money issue. they make money from the state. it's not city college and i think the money that was made last year was 140,000. these are small numbers. i think the cost projected was somewhere around 180,000 for 2020. the numbers of classes cut for older adults was -- >> next speaker, please. next speaker, please. thank you. >> the speaker's time has elapsed. next speaker, please. >> my name is zeke. i have been taking classes at city college for practically 20 years. for very long time taking art classes through continuing education, which is now called extension at fort nation -- fort mason. i want to add, please save fort mason. that is an amazing campus. i want to tell you what i love about city college. what i love about city college is how much effort is given and resources to help people succeed do you know you can go into the library without an appointment and get tutored in math and anatomy and physiology or help somebody write a paper? cutting classes is really -- it is going in the wrong direction. it's not helping people achieve dreams. it is not helping people succeed , and decimating the older adults offerings is unconscionable. i am a big, big advocate of lifelong learning and always have been. and of city college being a community college. it has effected me and that there was a class i was going to take in screen printing next semester was very suddenly was cut, and -- anyway, this seems to be some discussion on who is going to pay for the keeping the class cuts. please, please work it out. please, work it out. thank you. >> hello. i am african-american and latino as i prepare for classes for this semester, the final last semester at city college. i will be attending a university in fall 2020. i wonder what the next generation if they will have the same upward mobility that ccsf has given me. i have been a student at ccsf through the summer of nine -- since the summer of 1997. at that time, i had a child on my hip and a younger child looking up at me wondering how we will survive. so i wanted to go for nursing back in 1997, but i thought culinary would be a quicker way for me to be able to provide for my family. so wanted to tell you what ccsf has taught me. when i had taken english one a, it taught me that the teacher went back to the civilization of san francisco and then he taught -- so that was the beginning of our life. we had to go back to our childhood, know who we were, and tell us about our community that we belong to a community, and then it taught us about our individual self. i was doing social justice work. the door was open for me to learn about project survive which is a place for tranquility , a place where no one is judged and everyone is accepted for who they are. a place of tranquility and love. i was going to take self-defence classes this semester because i am a survivor of domestic violence. >> good afternoon. as a councillor who has worked with thousands of students at city college, i have seen these cuts as really unprecedented. they do not support our students of color, our equity populations , and so many who have dealt with trauma, with insecurity, and it was all the things that we are coping with as a city, as a community. so what you actually see is that the very classes that are supposed to help students reach their goals in terms of degrees, certificates, and transfers, are being whittled way back, and i started collecting stories from students who said they are in digital illustration, carpentry, commuter science, fine arts, visual media design, the older adults program sent me seven stories as soon as i put out that call. everybody has these needs that are so significant because, you know, in their lives, i see, as a student support coordinator, that if you don't have critical resources, which is what we provide through tutoring, through counseling, through the homeless and housing at risk programs, you are not supporting the full student. yesterday the housing at risk coordinator told me that her office abruptly got moved without any notice. this is not a private space that she will be moving into. she is swarmed. she has had her 20 our full support staff, back. she is the only person handling this for so many of our students who are sleeping in their cars, couch surfing, and potentially on the streets. these are the students we have to think about and support day in and day out. they come from all walks of life they come from high school, but they are also coming from distant countries where they have experienced hardships. they are older adult students. many of my child development students work full-time and full time and they also have spent years to get their degree so they can provide -- >> my name is janet. i teach ceramics. i think it's time we took a magnifying glass to the way this administration spends money because we share your concerns about the money. we had -- and i think we need to go to the highest levels to look at this. so we are told students of color will be helped by these cuts, but we have been hearing that is not the case. when i look across my classroom, which is always full, i have 25 students in a small ceramics studio, and i turned away at least that many that wanted to take the class. i see a lot of black hair. i mostly see black hair when i look out across my classroom, and some grey hair. we are an ethnically diverse college and we know it. nobody needs to even prove that. we know that is true, and yet these very classes are the ones getting cut. ceramics lost a third of its program. a third of our program. these classes are always full and we always have a waiting list. we always have to turn people away and people love these classes. we have to look at what is what shout what really is going on. i appreciated your question about, you know, what is the real motive? what is the real thing going on here? faculty who are cut were mostly part-timers who had health benefits. so that was one big cost savings it had nothing to do with certificates or the programs or what is good for the students. how about the real estate? it's a real estate grab here. we have southeast campus completely emptied out. great, let's sell it. we will tear down the art bill -- arts building so we can build a new building. we just heard there will be another new building built. what is this? what is really going on? let's look at the highest levels of administration here. we want your help. >> hello. i'm a student at city college. just to go off with janet was saying just now, we do want your help. i just wanted to, to the trustees in the room, students and faculty spent the last two months fighting really, really hard to restore the classes we lost and i'm glad that now you are supporting this supplemental , but you were not there for the legislative visits , you are not there advocating for the funding, and i think that, you know, supporting the supplemental a day before it was voted on is not enough. we all did the legwork to get the votes and if you heard why some people didn't vote for the supplemental, it is because the administration and the college were not asking for it. that is true. you were not asking for it. so i want you to reflect on that and why you were not asking for it until the very last moment when the vote was upcoming and we already knew what the vote would be like. i really would like you to reflect on that and to think why is it that the students and the faculty have had to put in all the work to save these classes that are obviously extremely important to the community. i don't want to be redundant and say, you know, how i have been affected, because i think there are more compelling stories here from students who are mower disadvantaged than i am and we need your help. we do need your help, but we need your full help, not just when it's convenient and when it will look bad if you don't help us. i wish we had more data as well and i'm disappointed the administration did not provide all the data that supposedly supports all these cuts, but i am most disappointed by the lack of support from our trustees. we really need you to advocate for the college the way that we are advocating for it. i really, really think that needs to be said here because all the students that are behind me, we spend a lot of our time trying to get this to $.7 million that we probably won't get if the mayor vetoes. thank you. >> this student even offered half of her pastel drawing supplies because she knew how expensive materials could be. i did not accept her generous offer say but -- offered but she exemplifies to a city college student is. some who is generous, kind, and resourceful. these are the students who are affected when you cut classes. what makes city college special is is a free open campus available for students at any skill level. to get some perspective, san francisco has three private art schools. one is the renowned san francisco art institute which charges, intuition alone, nearly $46,000 each school year and requires a well-developed art portfolio of work for admission. san francisco state, the only other school with a public our program charges $7,200 in tuition for the year. city college is the only place where you can receive a high quality education. i want to share with you all testimonials from city college art department students describing the impact and many of these students participated in the protest art show that is currently on at fort mason on the first floor. i hope you will be able to attend before it closes on february 5th. thank you. >> hello. i am a student. i'm here to talk about the filipino language classes. as of spring of 2020, the filipino language class was cancelled because and because of that, i was devastated because i want to learn and understand the filipino language. also, the filipino community is one of the biggest communities in san francisco, and because of that, the language is the third most spoken language in san francisco. cancelling filipino language class limits people like myself who are willing to take and learn the filipino language. the filipino language also fulfils humanity in ccsf which is required to graduate. when he to restore the classes so students like myself who want to learn to speak the language, to munich it with family, friends, and the community and are able to get the certificate of accomplishment for taking the filipino language community. >> hello. i come to you today as someone who was born in san francisco, raised in san francisco, attended lowell high school, eventually got into u.c. davis, and experienced sexual abuse as a child, and in college. so i need to understand that between intergenerational trauma as a child of refugees, as someone with women in my family who have experienced sexual trauma, and is is a right -- and as a survivor myself, you know, the way that the state measures achievement, they would have went right past me. they didn't know that i needed help and i performed perfectly fine in their system. at the end of it, i felt empty. i didn't know who i was, i didn't know what i wanted to do, and i have had suicidal ideations. you have to understand that in city college, the type of support that we provide is something that is about providing community. it's about teaching people the history of those who are marginalized. it is about empowering those with a sense of identity so they know, they understand their impression and they can fight it in their own lives, they can fight it in their communities, and they can excel because only because of city college do i have the strength to apply to medical school, that i want to go into public health, and i want to be someone who helps the community, who helps the asian-american community, who helps a latino excommunity where my partner is from, who will help the undocumented community, to provide them extraordinary health outcomes. we don't want to survive, we want to thrive. protecting and bringing these classes back is about being able to bridge and prevent these programs from being cut at all. >> my name is aris. i want to say that there are systemic issues that this administration must address. one thing is getting a forensic audit to address the budget crisis and another thing is supporting emergency bridge funding to get a remaining cosponsor. also, we have our own marketing firm or marketing program, but then they are unable to support the under enrolled classes that are in danger of getting cancelled. students have been doing that. students have been doing outreach despite being exhausted for me i am tired to the point where i have to convince myself that i am not drained at this moment. it has enabled students who live -- to live their lives. we do this because we care. we do this because this community has taught us how to be empathetic. we are taught how to also live our lives. i know that one night, a family member of mine told me that they wanted to disappear and i know when they said that to me, it felt like all the lights turned off. i wanted to be able to help them and i think city college enables me to have the skill set to talk to someone and help them and pulled him upwa