We recommend voting for Ruth Ferguson for Community College Board, Partial Term.

We endorsed Ferguson in 2024, and Mayor Lurie appointed her to the Board in January to fill the seat Alan Wong left when he became District 4 Supervisor. She is running unopposed for the rest of that term.

Half a year in, she has the college's cost problem down to specifics. Salaries and benefits consume more than 90% of the unrestricted general fund against a state Chancellor's Office guideline of 85%, and as she points out, that share keeps climbing even when headcount holds flat, because the revenue underneath it is not growing. She backed Chancellor Messina's division reorganization as one answer.

Her enrollment plan follows the same logic: put money where demand already exceeds seats. That means health care pathways, where City College's nursing and allied health programs are capacity-constrained in the largest employment sector in San Francisco, and the workforce pipelines that already work, including CityBuild and the fire and police training programs. She came to this from student homelessness policy in the state Legislature, and before that she was student body president of a community college of more than 17,000 students, where she oversaw a $1.4M budget.

City College's finances will be decided in the next two years, not the next decade. Ferguson has spent her first six months on the Board learning exactly where the money goes.