The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges has roundly rejected a faculty union’s complaint that the commission violated the law and was biased by conflicts of interest in harshly punishing the City College of San Francisco.
A report issued on Thursday by the accrediting commission’s executive committee calls the accusations, contained in a 288-page complaint filed by the California Federation of Teachers, “without merit,” and refuses to even respond to some of them, arguing that they do not merit a reply.
“Our commissioners perform their responsibilities with utmost professionalism and integrity,” Sherrill Amador, the commission’s chair, said in a news release accompanying the report. The report itself makes clear that the commission has no intention of putting off a planned vote next month on whether to strip the 85,000-student, multisite San Francisco institution of its accreditation.
The commission, which accredits two-year institutions for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, first placed the City College of San Francisco on “show cause” status, its most severe penalty short of de-accreditation, last year. The college itself has sought to try to satisfy, rather than fight, its accreditor, but it has drawn resistance from its unions to some of the steps it has taken to meet the commission’s demands.
The college did not sign onto the labor union’s complaint against the accreditor, which the commission’s report notes in arguing that the complaint does not reflect the college’s views and in questioning the union’s standing to take action on the college’s behalf.
Fred Glass, a spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, said on Thursday that “we are contemplating our next actions.” He noted that the union had yet to receive a response from U.S. Education Department officials who were sent copies of its complaint. He also called the commission’s report “completely predictable” and said, “The ACCJC has no ability whatsoever to reflect constructively on criticisms.”
‘Lacks Credibility’
Although such complaints against the commission typically are fielded by its president, in this case the person in that role, Barbara A. Beno, delegated the investigation of the union’s accusations to the commission’s executive committee because the complaint contained allegations directed at her, the report says.
The report does not respond in any depth to the union’s complaint that the commission has violated federal and state laws in its dealings with the college, holding that responding to such accusations would be inappropriate because “this is not a court of law.”
The report adds, however, that the commission develops its policies and procedures in consultation with its legal counsel, and says the commission “has no reason to believe that its policies are not fully in accordance with all applicable legal requirements.” It similarly rejects the complaint’s assertions that the commission used the wrong accounting standards in judging the college’s financial health.
A substantial portion of the report responds to the union’s assertion that the commission’s actions have been prejudiced by serious conflicts of interest because its 17-member evaluation team for the college included Ms. Beno’s husband, Peter Crabtree, a dean at Laney College, a two-year institution in Oakland, Calif.
The report says Ms. Beno “had nothing to do” with Mr. Crabtree’s appointment to the team, and asserts that “the mere existence of a spousal or other similar personal relationship between a member of the ACCJC’s staff and a team member has never been viewed as creating a conflict of interest.”
It says neither Mr. Crabtree nor Ms. Beno previously had any relationship with the City College of San Francisco, and adds that the suggestion Mr. Crabtree could have influenced 16 other evaluation-team members to prepare an unfair and biased evaluation of the college “lacks credibility.”
In response to the union’s complaint that the commission penalized the college without adequate prior warning, the report says the commission clearly alerted the college about several concerns in 2006, but since then the college’s situation “had deteriorated dramatically.”
