City College of San Francisco to Issue Formal Public Acknowledgment
Cantonese Program was Inappropriately Withdrawn and
Action will be Taken to Make Amends to the Community
June 27, 2023 (San Francisco) – City College will be issuing a formal public acknowledgement to the community that its 16 unit Cantonese Certificate of Achievement (CAch) program was inappropriately withdrawn from proceeding forward. City College will also include a notation in its 2023-2024 academic catalog that the 16 unit Cantonese certificate will be offered in the 2024-2025 academic year. This unanimous decision was the result of a June 22 Board of Trustees meeting in which Board President Wong had proposed the notation after the 16 unit Cantonese certificate had been inappropriately withdrawn.
“We need this certificate so that we can train the next generation of public safety, healthcare, and social workers that can serve and build trust with the Chinese community. We finally had recognition that the Chinese and Cantonese speaking community matters. There were students that celebrated our 16 unit Cantonese certificate and were expecting to see it in the catalog,” said Wong. “They will be shocked to find it missing and the notation will provide transparency, an acknowledgment to the community and recognize that City College is committed to a successful Cantonese program in the 2024-2025 academic year.”
City College’s Cantonese classes are an important resource to the large Chinese community in San Francisco because it is one of the few remaining resources to train new bilingual speakers for healthcare, social work, and public safety professions. Many people also enroll in the classes to improve communication with their family members and seniors. A separate newly approved 9 unit Cantonese certificate will be on the 2023-2024 academic catalog, however, the withdrawn 16 unit Cantonese certificate is significant because a Cantonese certificate program with at least 16 units meets the state criteria and measurements for state funding. Since Fall 2019, all Cantonese classes have been full.
In 2021, City College administrators wanted to cut the popular Cantonese classes because the classes did not fall within the purview of any certificate program that meets the state criteria and measurements for state funding. Since the Cantonese classes did not fall under a 16 unit certificate program and had less value for state funding, it was more likely to be cut than other classes. After extensive public outcry from a coalition of over 40 community organizations, City College adopted a policy in January 2022 by Wong that would set City College on the path to creating a certificate program that meets state criteria giving the Cantonese classes value and protects against class reductions.
The typical City College process for approving a certificate includes the following process: faculty developing a certificate, a recommendation from the Curriculum Committee, then approval by the Board of Trustees and subsequent approval from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO). In the case of the Cantonese program, after Wong’s policy passed and 9 and 16-unit certificate programs had been developed by faculty, the College’s Curriculum Committee recommended a 9 unit Conversational Cantonese Certificate on September 28, 2022 and the Committee also recommended the 16 unit Chinese Cantonese Certificate on October 12, 2022. Then on November 10, 2022, the City College Board of Trustees ratified courses and programs recommended by the Curriculum Committee (Item 13.B. 173), including the two Cantonese certificates.
Everything was following the typical process until on November 23, 2022, the Curriculum Committee retracted its support for the 16 unit Cantonese Certificate. The November 23 Curriculum Committee meeting minutes stated, “One of the department’s proposed Cantonese certificates recently approved with stipulations will not be moving forward at this time. While the 9-unit Conversational Cantonese CAch is being forwarded for CCCCO approval, the larger Chinese (Cantonese) CAch has been reverted back to draft status until the department has the resources to develop more Cantonese offerings, including a grammar course.”
During public comment at the March 23, 2023 Board of Trustees meeting the World Languages and Cultures Department Chair Diana Garcia-Denson stated at the 2:55:00 mark, “There is no 16 unit Cantonese Certificate of Achievement and it will not be in the 2023 catalog. This certificate has not been finalized by our department and remains in the draft stage in curriculum. The current draft does not meet department standards because we don’t have the courses nor the resources to support a 16-unit certificate in Cantonese.”
The proposed 16 unit Cantonese certificate would not have required new or additional courses or resources and threaded together existing class offerings to comprise a certificate. The Curriculum Committee retracted the 16 unit Cantonese certificate, stating that they wanted a new grammar and other courses, which would subsequently require more funding and resources. Alternatively, the Curriculum Committee could have let the 16 unit certificate move forward for the 2023-2024 academic year and then propose changes in future years without delaying the certificate’s implementation.
At the June 22 Board of Trustees meeting at the 4:44:23 mark, City College’s legal counsel stated that the Curriculum Committee’s retraction of the certificate already approved by the Curriculum Committee and Board of Trustees was inappropriate, “The Curriculum Committee after the Board approves it does not really have that kind of role in order to overturn the Board’s vote. Once it’s presented by the Curriculum Committee and then approved by the Board, it then must be approved by the state chancellor’s office before it can be offered as an educational program. If the Curriculum Committee wanted to present a change to the Board, you know, there are ways to do that… Those things did not happen in this instance. The curriculum committee minutes do reflect an intent to withdraw it back to draft status but the Board had already approved it at that point.”
Unfortunately, even though it was determined that the Curriculum Committee had overstepped its authority and the 16 unit certificate should have moved forward in the next step of the approval process to the CCCCO, it was not possible because records of the certificate had been deleted from CurrIQunet, the College’s curriculum management app.
At the June 22 Board of Trustees meeting at the 5:06:00 mark, after being questioned why the College could not now go ahead and submit the certificate for final approval by the CCCCO since the Curriculum Committee had no authority to withdraw the certificate, City College Chancellor David Martin stated, “I do believe that the information that would be needed to submit to the Chancellor’s office was no longer available in the system to submit.”
“City College’s public acknowledgment on the wrongful withdrawal of the certificate and notation in the academic catalog are the first steps to move forward and begin the healing process,” said Wong. “The community celebrated the Cantonese certificate after the Board of Trustees voted to move it forward and were all shocked to see it get pulled. It was unfair and unjust and we need to rebuild the trust with our Chinese community. I am committed to righting this wrong and ensuring that City College rectifies its mistakes.”
In San Francisco, Cantonese is the most commonly spoken language by the Chinese population. According to the City’s 2021 Language Access Compliance Summary Report, there were 659,184 Limited English Proficient client interactions across all City Departments and of those 287,474 (43.6%) were in Cantonese. San Francisco Police Department data indicates that in 2020 there were a total of 9,380 interpretation services provided, consisting of 3,289 in-person and 6,091 Language Line Insight smartphone app interpretation services. Cantonese is also the second most requested translation for incoming 911 domestic violence calls. Language was the most common barrier to help-seeking for Asian callers to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
