We need new leaders who understand the crisis and will take the hard votes to fix City College. Heather McCarty, Ruth Ferguson, Aliya Chisti, and Luis Zamora have what it takes.

City College is in crisis. Due to poor oversight from the current and past Boards, City College has misspent tens of millions of dollars, failed to build up its fiscal reserves, and experienced a huge drop in enrollment. Now, state regulators have stepped in and presented City College with 119 concerns they need to fix.

In our questionnaires (see the table below), these candidates show the deepest understanding of the college’s current budget, as well as how the college ended up with such a large deficit. In addition, they all present realistic and varied plans to fix them. From expanding partnerships with SFUSD to boost dual-enrollment (which is way lower than similar community colleges), boosting revenue-generating programs, increasing enrollment, to downsizing staff and reducing or eliminating investments in ineffective programs, there’s many paths to try.

And, importantly, they all take their role as an oversight body seriously. Rather than micromanage City College’s chancellor, they want to set clear guidelines, establish open communication, and have transparent budgets so everyone knows what they’re responsible for and who is falling short.

We must save City College, and we can only do it by electing four candidates that take the problems, and the solutions, seriously.