Ruth Ferguson

• Office: Community College Board
• Election Date: November 3, 2026
• Candidate: Ruth Ferguson
• Due Date: August 10, 2026
• Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 3, 2026 election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city delivered via common sense solutions and effective government. Our work includes running public opinion polls to understand what voters want, advocating for those changes, and ensuring that the SF government represents the people.

The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco.

This questionnaire will be published on growsf.org, and so we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

Please complete this questionnaire by August 10, 2026 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

Note: This questionnaire will use the initialism “CCSF” when referring to the Community College of San Francisco.

• Your Goals
• Executive Leadership
• The Issues
• Personal
• Thank you

Your Goals

We’d like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.

The Community College Board of Trustees have three major responsibilities as the governing body of CCSF: (1) hiring, evaluating, and holding the Chancellor accountable to achieving CCSF’s mission, (2) ensuring fiscal solvency and long term institutional sustainability, and (3) setting policy, mission, and strategic direction that makes CCSF a valued community institution. What do you believe is your most relevant experience, perspective(s), or idea(s) that makes you uniquely qualified to be an effective Trustee?

Since being appointed to the Board of Trustees by Mayor Lurie in January, I’ve been proud to work collaboratively with my colleagues, the Chancellor, and the campus community to hit the ground running for City College. The direct experience of working in this role for a little over half a year has prepared me for the continued work of uplifting and stabilizing the college.

Some additional, specific experiences and perspectives that qualify me for this role:

• I worked on housing policy, and specifically student homelessness policy, in the California Legislature. The Assemblymember I worked for authored AB 302 in 2019, which would have required community colleges to provide safe parking lots for students experiencing homelessness. This bill ultimately died in the legislative process, but it was invaluable for me to meet with the dozens of proponents and opponents, community groups, and advocates to better understand the issue and the impact of the proposed intervention.
• I have a master’s degree in public policy and have taken specific coursework on managing organizational budgets, education and social policy, economics, and much more. This education gave me the practical tools while my experience working in politics and government grounds me with the real-life skills to effectively understand and maneuver a body like the CCSF Board of Trustees.
• While attending community college, I served as the student body president of a campus with over 17,000 students. I chaired our Executive Committee, Bylaws Committee, and was appointed to serve on the campus Shared Governance Committee. I oversaw a $1.4 million student services budget and supervised our Finance Director and Finance Committee so that every recommendation passed through our Executive Committee was in compliance with relevant laws (such as Title IX) and our bylaws. I served in this role during the greatest budget cuts to higher education in state history, and I organized a lobbying visits with faculty, staff, and students to appeal to state legislators.
• After coming forward as a whistleblower in the California Legislature, I built and led a statewide coalition to advocate for workers’ rights. I managed our partnerships with statewide organizations (e.g. Courage CA, Close the Gap CA, CA Women’s List, the CA Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, etc.). I authored a policy analysis under the sponsorship of Senator Dave Cortese on methods to improve state worker welfare and continue to advocate for policy reform on this issue — in San Francisco, and across the state.

How do you intend to use your experience to make CCSF stronger? Please name 1-3 goals you have for your term as Trustee.

In my role as Trustee, I will:

• Continue to prioritize budgeting that protects the college’s financial stability and longevity—full stop. I will also work with labor partners, my colleagues, and the Chancellor to ensure we prioritize solutions that will uplift the health and welfare of our employees.
• Work with the Chancellor to encourage programs and opportunities that will grow enrollment, fostering partnerships like dual enrollment through SFUSD, as well as workforce development pipelines like programs we have with Building Trades and city departments like SFFD and SFPD (possible through a grant from Crankstart).
• Advocate for clearly-defined, sustained Free City funding. Earlier this year, the Mayor’s proposed budget included cuts to Free City. There were strong reasons for the proposed cuts (namely, the city’s structural deficit), but my colleagues and I spoke with Supervisors to support the full restoration of the program’s funding. I openly communicated with the Mayor's office to lead with transparency, and ultimately believe we achieved the right outcome for San Franciscans. In the future, I look forward to charting a clearer, more stable path forward between the Board of Supervisors, Mayor, and CCSF so all of us are on the same page well before we are nearing the completion of the budget process.

Will the power of the office of the Board of Trustees be enough to achieve these goals?

Yes. Since joining the Board, I have gotten a much clearer sense of what I am and am not allowed to pursue as a Trustee. Although it can be challenging to not want to do more, or advocate for more, it is imperative that we stay in our lane — particularly since CCSF was on accreditation warning in 2024 because Trustees were stepping outside the boundaries of their roles. I prepared the goals above with those limitations in mind.

What is an existing Board of Trustees, or CCSF policy, you would like to reform?

We have undergone an extensive overhaul of our Board Policies this year, so quite a few of the policies that need refinement are currently being reformed (they are in the shared governance process after clearing the Board). One general area where I think we could still use further examination and refinement is our meetings structure. Currently, our meetings begin at 5 pm and often don’t conclude until past midnight. There are many variables that affect this prolonged timeline. Ultimately, I think it is a) unfair to members of the public who wish to participate in our meetings but regularly have to stay until very late in the evening to voice their concerns b) unwise for Trustees to be making sometimes very large, consequential decisions at such a late hour.

It may seem like a small issue, but it’s one that I’ve noticed has a large impact. Public bodies should be thorough and take the time they need to focus on the issues before them, yes, but we also must be efficient and thoughtful.

What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? For the purpose of this question, you are not constrained to the office of the Board of Trustees.

I have a lot of those! I publicly advocated for a narrow, but very significant, change to the Legislative Open Records Act to better hold legislative leaders accountable for workplace misconduct in the State Capitol.

A specific legislative change that would directly affect CCSF: I will work with my colleagues on the Board, as well as other Bay Area community college trustees, to lobby state legislators to provide COLA for urban community colleges like CCSF that have been slower to increase their enrollment post-COVID. Although our budget is currently balanced and stable, we will have significant challenges ahead, and receiving COLA funding (which is currently frozen until we increase our enrollment to pre-pandemic levels) would be a major support while we continue to slowly rebuild.

Executive Leadership

Please describe your experience running or governing large organizations, managing teams (including hiring, firing, and performance management), driving cultural change and clear communication throughout all levels, effective financial management (budgets, reporting, audit, etc.), and any other relevant experience you will bring to this office.

Please see below for an excerpt from my 2024 questionnaire for CCSF Board for a detailed response to this question.

Since joining the Board in January, I have had the opportunity to put the experiences listed below to work. I have proudly voted for a balanced budget, collaborated with my colleagues to support core funding and programs like Free City, and have a keener eye to the future work still required to keep the College on stable footing.

2024 Questionnaire Response:

Governing large organizations:

• While in community college, I served as the student body president on a campus with over 17,000 students. I chaired our Executive Committee and our Bylaws Committee, and I oversaw a $1.4 million budget. I worked with our Finance Director and Finance Committee to ensure that every recommendation passed through our Executive Committee in accordance with our bylaws and in compliance with laws like Title IX, etc.

Managing teams

• I was the deputy campaign manager for a winning county supervisor candidate in San Jose. I nearly doubled our volunteer base and grew a team of consistent volunteers. Our campaign did not have the support of labor or business (the two primary political factions in San Jose), but we won with an over 20 point lead in November due to our strong field operations. I organized and coordinated dozens of phone banks and mobilizations, and made sure volunteers felt engaged by communicating directly with them to identify their personal interests.
• I have managed several teams of interns throughout my career. I love working with interns and am in close touch with many interns-turned-young professionals to this day.
• I built and led a statewide coalition to advocate for workers’ rights. Working with a team of four co-founders, I managed our partnerships with statewide organizations (e.g. Courage CA, Close the Gap CA, CA Women’s List, the CA Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, etc.). I authored a policy analysis under the sponsorship of Senator Dave Cortese on methods to improve state worker welfare and continue to advocate for incremental policy reform.

Driving cultural change and clear communication:

• In my first job in Washington D.C., at a nonprofit in higher education, entry-level workers in my organization wanted to unionize to address low wages and the organization’s lack of compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). We were not equipped to pursue unionization, but I persisted by preparing a report that showed the difference in entry-level wages at my organization and comparable organizations. I worked with the VP of my department to identify gaps in my report before meeting 1:1 with our COO to present my findings. I was ultimately successful in raising the salary floor for all 1000+ employees in my organization.
• On several occasions during jobs as a nonprofit program manager and as a field representative in the California Legislature, I worked to address communication issues between constituents and management/government. This has resulted in state policy outcomes, internal policy outcomes, and governing practices.
• As a whistleblower after experiencing sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation as a staffer in the California Legislature, I co-founded a statewide coalition to address workers’ rights called Stop Sexual Harassment in Politics (SHIP). We advocated for incremental reforms in the Legislature, and I authored and presented a policy analysis to Senate leadership with three recommendations that were implemented by the Legislature in August 2022.
• Between 2015-2017, I developed and launched national campus programs on disability advocacy, dialogue facilitation, and student leadership. I worked with hundreds of students and dozens of universities and colleges across the country to support these programs.

Financial management:

• As a nonprofit program manager, I was responsible for building specialized programs that met the terms of the multi-million dollar grants we received from private foundations. I had to ensure our programs and our reporting schedules were in compliance with the grant requirements. I also managed the budgets for these programs.
• In my MPP, I completed coursework cross-listed with the Haas School of Business on Financial Management of Nonprofits.

One of the most critical roles for the Board of Trustees is to hire/fire, evaluate, and hold accountable the Chancellor. Please describe your experience working with an executive leader to hold them accountable.

Note: Please remember that this questionnaire will be public, so do not include any personally identifiable information.

Earlier this year, the Chancellor announced that the administration will pause courses at the CCSF Downtown Center. This decision is operational and, therefore, was made without the Board’s approval or consultation.

The Chancellor has good reason for this change at the Downtown Center, but the decision also understandably caused alarm and concern for many faculty, staff, and community members. For months, the community has shown up for public comment at Board meetings, they have held rallies outside our meetings, and have made it known what this space means to them.

Throughout this time, I went back and forth between the faculty labor union (AFT 2121) and the Chancellor to liaise and share feedback about breakdowns in communication and procedures. While being mindful of the boundaries of my role as a Trustee, I have gone beyond what’s expected to try to address some of the interpersonal tensions that often spill out into other issues on the Board. I appealed directly to my colleagues and to the public during a particular meeting when tensions were dramatically rising, and encouraged everyone to recommit to collaboration so we can actually work together to build a better future.

I applaud the Chancellor for being open and honest about some of the less-than-ideal decisions she made in this process, and I also honor the difficulty she was facing as a newer administrator who inherited a tough issue. It has been challenging, but also meaningful, for me to understand each group’s perspective on this issue so I can be most useful in charting a more collaborative path forward.

In general, how do you approach making difficult decisions that you deem necessary even if unpopular? Please share a relevant example, if applicable.

When making challenging and/or unpopular decisions, first, I do my own research to get a sense of what I do and do not know about the decision and its potential (intended or unintended) consequences. Then, I consult relevant stakeholders, trying to see and really understand all sides of the issue. Lastly, while making my own decision and before taking any action, I circle back with stakeholders to let them know where I stand. Transparency and honesty in public service are not only values of mine, but I also think operating with these values is the most effective way of moving policy forward.

The Issues

Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

Please describe the current budget allocation of CCSF.

CCSF's budget includes both restricted and unrestricted funding. Most of the college's general operating money comes through the state's Student Centered Funding Formula (SCFF), which provides $166.7M — our single largest source of general-purpose dollars. Because CCSF is still funded under hold harmless rather than on the formula itself, we do not receive statutory COLA on most of that revenue, and we won't until we transition onto the SCFF, which is still several years out.

The college also receives money from local voter-approved taxes: $19.8M from the parcel tax and $14.5M from the sales tax. The remainder comes from city funding for Free City, and from restricted state and federal categorical grants tied to specific programs.

That revenue is essentially flat, while our expenses are not. Every year brings contractually obligated step and column movement, rising health and welfare premiums, higher utility costs, and other increases outside our control.

On the spending side, the largest allocations go to people. We spend $72.9M on academic salaries, $46.4M on classified salaries, and $60.6M on employee benefits. More than 90% of the unrestricted general fund goes to salaries and benefits, against the California Community College Chancellor's Office recommendation of no more than 85%.

CCSF has faced repeated fiscal instability. What do you see as the structural drivers of CCSF’s financial challenges? And what will you do, as Trustee, to ensure CCSF moves toward long-term fiscal sustainability?

CCSF's fiscal instability is structural, not the result of any single bad year. Two drivers stand out.

The first is a mismatch between fixed revenue and escalating fixed costs. As stated above, our general-purpose funding is essentially flat, while contractually obligated step and column movement, health and welfare premiums, and utilities rise every year. That gap compounds annually. It also explains why salaries and benefits consume more than 90% of the unrestricted general fund against a Chancellor's Office guideline of 85%. The ratio climbs even when headcount holds steady, because the denominator isn't growing. Chancellor Messina's division reorganization is one response to this, and I have supported it.

The second driver is that CCSF is not yet funded under the Student Centered Funding Formula. The formula has three components: roughly 70% tied to enrollment, 20% to serving low-income students, and 10% to student outcomes. CCSF has made real, measurable gains on the second and third. Enrollment is where the remaining growth has to come from. Until we sufficiently grow, we stay frozen at a prior-year level and forgo statutory COLA. This means every year of flat revenue deepens the structural gap described above.

As Trustee, I will support enrollment growth targets tied to specific program areas, a multi-year budget framework rather than annual crisis management, protect and grow the Free City and parcel tax revenue streams, and require the administration to bring the Board a modeled path to SCFF conversion with a date attached.

San Francisco’s economy and the workforce landscape is changing. What new, existing, or re-imagined programs do you believe CCSF should prioritize over the next four years to ensure its students are getting a valuable education?

San Francisco’s economy has reorganized itself around a few sectors, including health care, AI and technology, construction and skilled labor, and a public sector that is often lacks the trained workers it needs. CCSF should be unapologetic about aligning to that map, while protecting the transfer and basic-skills mission that gets most of our students in the door.

I have four priorities:

1. Health care pathways: Health care is San Francisco's largest and most durable employment sector, and the shortage is acute at exactly what CCSF produces in the nursing and other allied health fields. CCSF’s programs are strong and capacity-constrained. Finding ways to expand cohort sie and clinical placement agreements is the highest-return enrollment investment available to us because demand already exceeds seats.
2. Workforce pipelines into public and building trades employment: I want to see CCSF build on what is already working. The Building Trades partnership through CityBuild and the training pipelines with SFFD and SFPD supported by the Crankstart grant place San Franciscans into stable union and public-sector jobs, and they draw students who would not otherwise enroll.
3. Noncredit and short-term credentials as a core strategy. CCSF operates one of the largest noncredit programs in California. We offer ESL, citizenship, older adults, workforce prep, and more. This is the part of the college that most directly serves immigrant and working-class San Franciscans and generates FTES. It is the natural on-ramp into credit programs, and should be treated as central to both our mission and our enrollment strategy.
4. AI literacy embedded across the curriculum. Every sector hiring in the city now assumes some fluency with these tools. Rather than building a standalone program, I would prioritize integrating applied AI competency into existing CTE and transfer pathways. Faculty lead the curricular decisions through the established governance process, not administrators imposing them.

A trustee's job is to set direction, not to manage operations. We don't direct employees, and I respect the shared governance processes that give faculty, staff, and students a real voice in how the college runs. That's not a limitation to work around — it's how a community college is supposed to function.

But, at the same time, the role carries real authority that I intend to use. The Board approves the budget, sets Board policy, hires and evaluates the Chancellor, and establishes the goals against which the college's progress is measured. Priorities become institutional priorities when they show up in those documents and in the questions we ask at the table. That's where I've been advancing this work, and where I'll continue to focus my attention.

How should the Board evaluate and hold the Chancellor accountable? Please name one or two measurable performance expectations you would prioritize.

The Board and other key stakeholders evaluate the Chancellor every year. I was pleased that Chancellor Messina received a “satisfactory” rating this year.

Since enrollment is one of our greatest, and most existential challenges, I expect the Chancellor to make meaningful strides toward increasing our enrollment. Our enrollment is growing steadily, and the partnerships and grants (named above) that Chancellor Messina has sought out have played a role in attracting and retaining students. But we must do more to overcome our budget constraints, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Chancellor to make operational decisions that encourage this necessary growth.

Imagine that State funding for CCSF declines unexpectedly, and CCSF faces a significant mid-year budget gap. You must choose between: reducing course offerings, drawing down reserves, delaying new hiring or compensation increases, cutting or consolidating low-enrollment programs, and more. How would you approach this decision? What data would you require, and what principles would guide your vote?

A mid-year gap has a size, a cause, and a duration, and the right response depends entirely on those three things. A one-time shortfall and a permanent revenue reduction call for opposite tools. Utilizing reserves would the correct answer to the first (a one-time shortfall) and a very dangerous answer to the second (a permanent revenue reduction), because drawing them down against an ongoing gap simply moves the reckoning to next year with fewer options left.

If the gap is genuinely one-time, this is precisely what reserves are meant to be used for. But if it is ongoing, the honest answer is that the college would have to restructure, and the Board’s job is to insist that restructuring be done deliberately and with date rather than through across-the-board reductions that damage strong programs and weak ones equally.

Before I would vote, I would need specific information. I would want to know the size of the gap and whether it is one-time or ongoing. Current reserve levels against the state minimum (5%) and against Board policy (goal of 16.7%). I would ask for a section-level enrollment analysis to identify fill rates, waitlists, and which sections are actually under-enrolled vs. simply scheduled at inconvenient times.

I would want the college to be using shared governance. Mid-year urgency is precisely when boards are tempted to skip consultation, and precisely when consultation is most valuable. Cuts should move outward from the classroom, starting with administrative and non-instructional costs before course sections, and contractual and legal obligations must be honored. Lastly, I would be transparent about what we are choosing and what it will cost, including the Board’s own credibility if we defer a problem rather than solve it.

Personal

Tell us a bit about yourself!

What is your professional background?

I am a policy communications consultant, working primarily with urbanist organizations and candidates. Two local organizations I work with currently are The Housing Action Coalition and Streets For All San Francisco.

Throughout every stage of my career, I have also consistently engaged in volunteer organizing. Currently, I am a lead organizer with District 9 Neighbors for Housing, a coalition of neighbors that fights for more housing at every income level in San Francisco.

Prior work includes: policy fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Civility and Democratic Engagement, graduate student researcher at UC Berkeley, district office field representative in the California Legislature (focused primarily on housing and transportation policy), deputy campaign manager for a Santa Clara County supervisor race, program manager at Hillel International, religious school teacher, campus barista, and community college student body president.

Are you currently or formerly enrolled at City College, and/or do you have any children who are currently or formerly enrolled at City College?

No. I am a community college graduate from Clark College and took additional coursework as a working professional at Foothill College in the South Bay.

How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?

I have lived in San Francisco for over six years and in the Bay Area for nine years.

There are many reasons why I continue to choose to call San Francisco home. I love my neighbors and feel a deep closeness to many of them. I love living just a few blocks away from my sister, and having the ability to decide on a whim to do something truly special whenever we want. I love the unique arts and food and culture in every nook and cranny across the city. I love that we are constantly growing and changing as a community, and that so many people in our city feel so passionately about making this place better for everyone. When visiting other parts of the country and world, I am incredibly proud to tell people that San Francisco is my home.

What do you love most about San Francisco?

I shared this in 2024, and it remains true: The thing I love most about San Francisco is that people are free to come as they are. Whether you’re a student, working in tech, an artist, a child, or retired — there is world-class opportunity, fun, and reinvention for everyone. My neighbors care about each other, despite some very distinct differences in age, politics, nationality, etc.

I didn’t grow up in a community that was bound together by that type of respect for each other’s differences. Even when partisan politics permeate regular life, my experience is that San Franciscans still have respect for one another. For people like me, that aspect of San Francisco is palpable and extremely special.

What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?

I also shared this in 2024 and it is still accurate: The economic disparities and inequality in this city are vast, and are reflected in some of the city’s most challenging issues: chronic homelessness and drug addiction, housing instability, and chronic health crises.

As the child of working parents, something I often think about is that my future children will grow up in a city that lacks meaningful socioeconomic diversity. That is, although socioeconomic diversity is certainly present in San Francisco, the population is highly segregated to the extent that diversity is not regularly experienced. I grew up in a community that was solidly middle class and low-income, but where students whose parents were higher earners went to the same public schools as students who lived below the poverty line. I think of my former schoolmates often when wondering about the disparate impacts that policies may have on particular individuals and groups. I imagine this also feels especially close as my own family broke a cycle of poverty just one generation ahead of me.

Sometimes I wonder how outcomes might look different in San Francisco if we were more accountable to our neighbors. If instead of distinct “haves” and “have nots,” there was a broader range of needs for which we all felt more responsible.

Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)

I previously served on the boards of SFYD and SFWPC. I am a member of the following Democratic clubs: United Democratic Club (UDC), YIMBY Action, San Francisco Young Democrats (SFYD), Bernal Heights Democratic Club, CA Women’s List, and SFWPC.

As previously mentioned, I am a lead organizer for a coalition called District 9 Neighbors for Housing. I work on projects such as: organizing to rezone Bernal Heights to improve our housing affordability, planning social and educational events to build our membership, and building short- and long-term political strategy to grow our influence in District 9.

I previously served on the board of LifeMoves, was a policy fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Civility and Democratic Engagement.

I am also very active in my local community. Whether it’s supporting the community garden project on my street (shout out Good Prospect Community Garden), attending community organizing meetings at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, making my way to one-off community events and town halls, hitting up the Alemany Farmer’s Market, or biking over to coffee shops to meet up with (and sometimes advise) younger people in politics. Being engaged in local politics is an extension of the fuller life I enjoy leading in San Francisco: one where I am present, engaged, and invested in my community and the lives of the members of that community.

Why do you want to run for public office?

Community college changed my life and my family’s for the better, and I want many more people to benefit from it. I chose to run for the CCSF Board in 2024 because I was genuinely concerned about the direction the institution was moving in — particularly because of the accreditation warning that year and the rough fiscal outlook. Now, I am running to retain my seat and continue the progress that we’ve made. I am incredibly hopeful for the future of City College. It is an honor to serve this life-changing institution.

Thank you

Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!