CFT CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT OF SEPTEMBER 24, 2013

CFT CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT OF SEPTEMBER 24, 2013

2. “Enjoin the ACCJC from engaging in accreditation evaluations of CCSF, and any of California's 112 community colleges in a manner that violates applicable federal or state law, or any of its own legal policies and procedures”;

3. “Order ACCJC to rescind, and cease giving force and effect to its Standards, elements of Standards, policies and procedures which constitute unlawful or unfair business practices”;

4. “Order the recusal from evaluation or actions involving CCSF, of ACCJC officers, agents, putative team members, and representatives who participated in the unfair and unlawful business practices proven in this case, including but not limited to Barbara Beno, Sherrill Amador, Frank Gornick, Steven Kinsella, John Nixon, Norval Wellsfry, Krista Johns, and Garmon Jack Pond; and anyone affiliated with (i) the CCLC JPA trust from 2006 onwards and (ii) anyone involved in advocating directly, or indirectly through another entity, for the Student Success Task Force or as a member or participant with a trade or other association pursuing matters involving CCSF; and for anyone else involved in an actual or apparent conflict of interest involving CCSF.”

5. “Order the ACCJC to pay the costs of suit”;

6. “Order ACCJC to pay attorney’s fees pursuant to Motion, in accordance with California's private attorney general statute, Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5".

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  ACCJC is required to appoint an independent evaluation team. Instead, ACCJC President Beno appointed her own husband to the 2012 team as the hatchet man, a man who had predetermined to disaccredit City College before he even conducted the evaluation. In 2013, she appointed her Vice President, along with a trustee of a trust fund that CCSF was ordered to pay into, by the 2012 and 2013 evaluation teams, and Beno.
  
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  ACCJC is required to appoint an evaluation team consisting of a balance of administrators and faculty peers. Instead, Ms. Beno appointed a team in 2012 with 17 members, just one a teacher. In 2013, the 9 person team had just one faculty member. Under Beno's leadership, ACCJC teams give administrators, who represent just 3 % of the colleges employees, 75% of the seats on the teams.
  
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  ACCJC's decree was based on a finding that City College had failed to cure deficiencies identified in past ACCJC reviews of City College, in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010. This was false. Past ACCJC reviews had identified no City College failures to meet accreditation standards.
  
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  The current review found no deficiencies in any of City College's 140 vocational programs or its hundreds of academic programs.
  
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  While the 2013 evaluation team found 19 violations of ACCJC's non academic standards, ACCJC's Commission raised this to 30 violations. ACCJC's rules allow this only when ACCJC first gives the college written notice, an opportunity to respond to the new charges in writing, and postpone the ACCJC decision until its next regular meeting, 6 months hence (i.e. in January 2014). But ACCJC failed to do so.
  
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  ACCJC's decree was based in part on ACCJC "team reports" and Beno's letters, criticizing City College for not paying money into the prefunded retiree health benefits trust (CCLC JPA). A founder of the trust, and one of its trustees, Steven Kinsella, is the Vice Chair of the ACCJC; another trustee of the fund, Frank Gornick, is a commissioner; many of the ACCJC's team leaders and members are trustees of the trust; and the trust's founder Kinsella is especially responsible for ACCJC's using prefunding as an indicator of whether a college should be sanctioned.
  
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  ACCJC failed to follow basic due process procedures, including a failure to provide findings of fact that justified its death penalty verdict, and Standards that fail to take into account California law on education as a constitutional right, and the impact of any failings of a college when they are legitimate ones on academic quality.
  
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  ACCJC normally gives a warning or probation to colleges that allegedly violate its Standards for the first time. Disaccrediting a first time offender is Draconian and unsupported by the evidence, and the result of the many conflicts of interest and other unfair and unlawful practices alleged.
  
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  Most of ACCJC's standards and criteria are not required by the U.S. Department of Education. ACCJC applied these standards of its own creation, even though they do not measure the academic quality of institutions, and they are arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable, and disrespect the public policy, laws and Constitution of California.
  
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  ACCJC decrees rely on its conclusion that CCSF did not meet several of these unlawful, unfair and sometimes unwritten standards. ACCJC found CCSF deficient because, inter alia, individual board members expressed their opinions on matters of public concern to their constituents, the board did not "speak as one," because of dissent by students, faculty and even the public from the views of some of CCSF's new leadership and the ACCJC, and because of criticism of ACCJC.
  
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  In July, the California Community College system installed a trustee to run City College, removing the elected school board. That trustee is allied with ACCJC and will not challenge its decree; his boss, the State Chancellor, was a member of the Commission for 6 years, and has been a confidante of ACCJC president Beno during the events alleged herein. They will not challenge unlawful and unfair practices, placing their hope on the goodwill of ACCJC and their internal "request for review" which they have refused to make public on the advice of ACCJC.
  

“This lawsuit seeks to preserve the heritage of a San Francisco institution, the only access that thousands of present and future San Francisco residents have to higher education, and the open access mission foreseen by a generation of Californians who valued affording California residents this opportunity.”