Last updated: October 6, 2026
The November 2026 San Francisco Community College Board election includes three full-term seats and two prominent three-candidate groupings: Jeremy Lee, Leah LaCroix, and Dr. Bunny McFadden; and Elijah Ball, Monroe Lace, and Erwin Tam. This page compares their publicly documented positions using candidate-authored questionnaires, public statements, CCSF records, and California community-college funding documents, with particular attention to enrollment growth, hold harmless, and long-term financial sustainability. KALW is used as corroborating journalism rather than as the framing source for the comparison.
What is the 2026 CCSF Board race about?
Public statements from candidates in both prominent three-person groupings identify enrollment and long-term finances as important issues. Their published statements differ in emphasis over how the college should respond—including the balance among spending restraint, program review, facilities decisions, and enrollment growth.
Ball, Lace, and Tam submitted GrowSF questionnaires that share a common budget analysis and emphasize long-range financial planning, enrollment growth, governance, and review of programs and facilities. KALW reported that Ball supports consolidating unused physical space, while Tam said he would expand classes with long waitlists and reduce under-enrolled classes. GrowSF, which endorses all three candidates, characterizes their approach as linking enrollment, facilities, academic programs, and finances in long-term planning.
KALW reported that Lee and LaCroix both said they would cut administrative positions while protecting certain classes. LaCroix emphasized noncredit offerings; Lee emphasized high-demand classes and Cantonese. McFadden did not identify a specific program or expense she would cut and told KALW that she would protect students. Lee’s campaign separately identifies enrollment growth, high-demand class access, Free City, noncredit education, Cantonese, and long-term financial stability as priorities.
Sources: KALW, Sept. 25, 2026; GrowSF 2026 Voter Guide and candidate questionnaires; Jeremy Lee campaign priorities; Our City College slate information.
Where is there overlap — and where is the difference — on enrollment?
All six candidates in the two prominent three-person groupings support enrollment growth. The difference in their published questionnaires is not “pro-enrollment versus anti-enrollment.” It is the centrality and causal role they assign to enrollment in CCSF’s financial strategy.
Jeremy Lee
Lee’s questionnaires repeatedly connect enrollment growth to high-demand course capacity, the Student Centered Funding Formula, and CCSF’s ability to move beyond hold harmless. In his Potrero Hill Democratic Club questionnaire, his four-year goal includes growing enrollment, investing in high-demand classes, and getting CCSF off the state’s hold-harmless provision. His published responses also argue that reserves above a prudent target can be used to invest in enrollment growth before the protected funding floor becomes more constraining.
Lee questionnaires: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; League of Pissed Off Voters.
Leah LaCroix
LaCroix repeatedly describes enrollment as a revenue issue as well as an access issue. Her questionnaires connect waitlists to foregone enrollment, support instructional investment where demand exists, emphasize noncredit pathways, and explicitly describe enrollment growth as the path from hold harmless back to the regular Student Centered Funding Formula.
LaCroix questionnaires: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; League of Pissed Off Voters.
Dr. Bunny McFadden
McFadden’s questionnaires focus heavily on the demand, recruitment, and retention side of enrollment growth: why students do not enroll or remain enrolled, including convenience, hidden costs, institutional reputation, transfer relationships, career and apprenticeship pathways, partnerships, and other barriers to attendance. In her League questionnaire she writes, “Enrollment is so critical to this conversation!” Her published responses therefore complement the formula-focused discussion by concentrating on how CCSF actually attracts and keeps students.
McFadden questionnaires: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; League of Pissed Off Voters.
Elijah Ball
Ball describes enrollment, academic programs, facilities, staffing, finances, and student outcomes as interconnected. His questionnaires support enrollment growth and implementation of the Strategic Enrollment Management Plan, while generally placing enrollment inside a broader institutional-planning framework.
Ball questionnaires: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; League of Pissed Off Voters; GrowSF.
Monroe Lace
Lace identifies increasing enrollment as a major goal and emphasizes the SFUSD-to-CCSF pipeline. Her published responses also place substantial emphasis on balancing the budget, reducing ongoing costs when revenue declines, program review, and the relationship between enrollment, student outcomes, and SCFF allocation.
Lace questionnaires: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; GrowSF.
Erwin Tam
Tam explicitly connects long-term enrollment decline to CCSF’s fiscal outlook, discusses increased reliance on state funding protections, supports dual enrollment, and calls for identifying key drivers of enrollment. His questionnaires also devote substantial attention to multiyear financial planning, reserves, facilities, and the broader fiscal cliff.
Tam questionnaires: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; GrowSF.
Source-based distinction: Lee, LaCroix, and McFadden more consistently organize their published strategies around rebuilding the student base itself—capacity, pathways, recruitment, retention, barriers, and formula-generated funding—while Ball, Lace, and Tam more often place enrollment within a broader fiscal and institutional-management framework. This is a difference in emphasis, depth, and organizing theory, not understanding versus ignorance. Ball, Lace, and Tam all explicitly recognize enrollment as financially important.
Questionnaire record: This comparison uses 19 publicly accessible completed questionnaire responses across four published questionnaire sets: Potrero Hill Democratic Club; San Francisco Democratic Party; League of Pissed Off Voters; and GrowSF. Direct candidate-response links appear immediately above with the substantive analysis. GrowSF is an endorsing advocacy organization; its questionnaire pages are used here as candidate-authored evidence, not as a neutral authority.
How do the two prominent candidate groupings describe their approaches?
| Issue | Ball / Lace / Tam — published statements | Lee / LaCroix / McFadden — published statements |
|---|---|---|
| Financial strategy | Their GrowSF questionnaires share a budget analysis and emphasize long-term financial stability, multi-year planning, enrollment, and scrutiny of programs, staffing, contracts, or facilities where appropriate. | KALW reported that Lee and LaCroix would cut administrative positions while protecting certain classes; McFadden did not identify a specific cut. Lee’s campaign states that he supports long-term planning and directing limited resources toward enrollment growth and high-demand programs. |
| Enrollment | All three support enrollment growth, but generally describe it within broader planning frameworks. Ball links enrollment to academic programs, facilities, and finances; Lace emphasizes increasing enrollment and the SFUSD-to-CCSF pipeline; Tam emphasizes enrollment trends, dual enrollment, and identifying key drivers of enrollment while focusing heavily on the broader fiscal outlook. | All three make rebuilding enrollment a central theme, with complementary emphases. Lee focuses on high-demand course capacity and the formula funding needed to move beyond hold harmless. LaCroix repeatedly connects enrollment, waitlists, noncredit pathways, revenue, hold harmless, and the SCFF. McFadden focuses on recruitment, retention, barriers to attendance, institutional reputation, transfer and workforce pathways, and other reasons students do or do not enroll and remain at CCSF. |
| Programs and classes | Lace says she would consider eliminating chronically low-enrollment programs in a sustained funding decline; Tam says he would ask the Chancellor and Academic Senate to review current and impacted course offerings; KALW reported that Tam would increase long-waitlist classes and reduce under-enrolled ones. | KALW reported that Lee would protect high-demand classes including Cantonese and that LaCroix emphasized noncredit offerings. McFadden said she would protect students but did not identify a specific program or expense she would cut. |
| Role of growth | Their questionnaires treat enrollment growth as one part of a broader strategy that also includes financial planning, student outcomes, governance, program review, and facilities. Lace explicitly notes that higher enrollment and student outcomes can raise SCFF allocation, and Tam discusses increased reliance on funding protections, but neither develops the hold-harmless exit strategy as extensively as Lee and LaCroix. | Lee, LaCroix, and McFadden collectively place rebuilding enrollment near the center of their institutional strategy, though they emphasize different mechanisms. Lee focuses on formula funding and high-demand capacity; LaCroix on revenue, waitlists, instruction, and noncredit pathways; McFadden on recruitment, retention, barriers, reputation, and student pipelines. |
What have Lee, LaCroix, and McFadden said about budget constraints?
The available sources do not support describing this group as favoring unlimited spending. KALW reported that Lee and LaCroix both identified administrative positions as an area they would cut while protecting certain classes. McFadden did not identify a specific cut in KALW’s reporting and instead emphasized protecting students.
Lee’s campaign priorities emphasize long-term financial planning, directing resources toward enrollment growth and high-demand programs, and treating unmet student demand as part of the college’s long-term financial strategy. KALW separately reported that Lee identified administrative positions as an area for cuts while protecting high-demand classes.
Source-based distinction: the record supports saying that Lee and LaCroix have identified spending reductions and that Lee explicitly connects fiscal discipline with targeted enrollment growth. The sources reviewed here do not establish that all three candidates have published an identical budget framework.
Why does enrollment growth matter financially?
California’s Student Centered Funding Formula, or SCFF, funds community colleges through a combination of enrollment, the number of low-income students served, and student-success measures. CCSF currently benefits from a state funding protection known as hold harmless.
Beginning in FY 2025-26, a district’s statutory hold-harmless floor is based on its 2024-25 funding level and does not automatically compound with cumulative statutory COLAs. The Legislature can still provide separate increases that also apply to hold-harmless districts; it did so in FY 2026-27 with an additional 1.44% apportionment increase. The Legislative Analyst’s Office explains that the policy is designed so districts eventually transition back to the regular SCFF calculation. A district can move off hold harmless when the amount it generates under SCFF becomes greater than its protected funding floor.
That means enrollment growth is financially important, but it is not the only factor. SCFF also includes supplemental allocations tied to specified student populations and student-success allocations tied to outcomes. Additional enrollment can raise CCSF’s regular SCFF calculation and narrow the gap to its protected floor; actual state apportionment does not necessarily rise dollar-for-dollar while the calculated SCFF amount remains below that floor.
Funding-mechanism distinction: CCSF cannot cut its way off hold harmless. Spending reductions can lower expenses, but they do not by themselves raise the regular SCFF calculation. To move beyond the protected floor, CCSF ultimately has to generate enough formula funding to exceed it. Enrollment is the largest component of regular-credit SCFF funding, while supplemental and student-success factors, local revenues, reserves, and expenditure controls also matter to the overall financial picture.
Primary sources: California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2026-27 Community Colleges analysis; CCSF Strategic Enrollment Plan; CCSF Budget, Surpluses & Reserves; CCSF Enrollment, Hold Harmless & Financial Sustainability.
Is the main disagreement whether CCSF has a financial problem?
The public statements reviewed here show a difference in emphasis rather than a clean disagreement over whether financial risk exists. Ball, Lace, and Tam place strong emphasis on projected future gaps, program and facilities review, and long-term expenditure discipline. Lee’s published materials emphasize recent actual operating results, existing reserves, unmet class demand, and targeted enrollment growth while also acknowledging future recurring-budget risk.
CCSF’s recent unrestricted operating results have been positive, while its adopted multi-year budget also projects future recurring gaps under current assumptions. Those facts are not mutually exclusive. The policy question for the next Board is how to use the college’s current position to reduce the risk of those projected future deficits.
See the underlying records: City College of San Francisco Facts & Primary Sources.
What do the fundraising figures establish?
KALW reported that Ball, Tam, and Lace had raised more money than the other candidates as of September 2026. The San Francisco Ethics Commission reports approximately $24,210 for Ball, $22,705 for Tam, and $16,380.99 for Lace. Those figures establish reported campaign contributions; they do not measure the number of voters supporting each candidate. KALW’s race article does not cite polling of the Community College Board contest.
San Francisco Ethics Commission records also show that $10,000 of Tam’s $22,705 total came from Tam himself, approximately 44.0% of the reported contribution total. That amount is included in the campaign’s contribution total but is not a contribution from another person.
Sources: KALW; San Francisco Ethics Commission; CCSF Facts & Primary Sources.
What differences are documented in the public statements?
Ball, Lace, and Tam’s GrowSF questionnaires emphasize long-term fiscal planning, enrollment growth, governance, and review of programs or facilities. KALW reports that Lee and LaCroix would cut administrative positions while protecting selected classes; Lee’s campaign priorities place particular emphasis on high-demand instruction and enrollment growth, while LaCroix emphasized noncredit offerings to KALW. McFadden did not identify a specific cut in KALW’s reporting.
The documented differences therefore concern the mix of spending reductions, program and facilities review, enrollment strategies, and student-facing investments each candidate emphasizes.