Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposed budget would cut Free City cash grants for low-income students at City College of San Francisco while preserving free tuition for residents.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s forthcoming budget will propose a 30% cut to “Free City,” the popular perk that has allowed thousands of city residents of all income levels to attend City College of San Francisco for free since 2017.
The budget, due out before June 1, will seek to reduce the $9.3 million program to $6.4 million by canceling a subset of Free City called “Free City Cash Grants” — aimed specifically at low-income students whose $46-per-credit fees are already paid for by the state.
Under the Free City Cash Grants, those low-income students also receive a cash grant from San Francisco, equal to that per-credit fee. So a student taking a full 12 units per semester, for example, receives $552.
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Under Lurie’s budget, all city residents would still be able to attend City College for free. What would end are the cash grants, which last year benefited more than 6,000 low-income students — about a third of the 20,243 city residents who attended City College through Free City in the 2024-25 academic year.
On Wednesday, dozens of angry students, college employees and residents showed up at a hearing called by Supervisor Connie Chan — a former City College staff member who serves on the Free City Oversight Committee — aimed at urging city officials to protect the grants.
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“The cash grants enable our most disadvantaged students to complete their education,” City College Chancellor Kimberlee Messina told the Board of Supervisors’ budget and appropriation committee, during which the hearing took place.
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Aliya Chisti, president of the City College Board of Trustees and former manager of Free City for the city, called it a “beautiful concept” in which San Francisco has sought to “invest in the radical idea that we should eliminate as many barriers to education as possible.”
Bolstering that idea were the dozens of students and former students who testified that they would not have been able to go to college without Free City — although it was not clear if they had received a grant or had benefited from Free City’s fee waiver alone.
Lurie is facing a budget deficit projected at $643 million over two years — and push-back against cuts in the budget he has yet to release.
Now that includes his proposed 30% cut to Free City.
A spokesperson for the mayor emphasized that every resident would still be able to attend City College for free.
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“All San Franciscans should have access to City College without worrying about the cost of tuition, and in this budget, they will continue to,” the spokesperson said, noting that other areas of the mayor’s budget would “strengthen San Francisco’s social safety net.”
Those who testified at Chan’s hearing were not buying that idea.
“The fact that Mayor Lurie is cutting this program is obscene!” Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, declared at the hearing.
Suggesting that a college education helps improve public safety, Tavaglione added: “Educated people don’t commit crimes.”
Maria Derek, who said they had been in and out of psychiatric institutions, avoided school for years “until I found out about Free City. It was a fresh hope. A fresh start.”
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Others said that City College had changed their lives, allowing them to get jobs or just feel connected to the world.
“I’m standing here as a real, flesh and blood example” of its benefits, said a woman named Sabrina. “It’s not a luxury or disposable line item. It’s a foundational lifeline. For brothers and sisters navigating recovery. Access to education breaks generational cycles” of poverty.
“When you propose cuts to Free City, you are telling us that the doors that finally opened up for us are slamming shut,” she said. “Stop the cuts.”