Erwin TamErwin Tam

We recommend voting for Elijah Ball, Monroe Lace, and Erwin Tam for Community College Board.

Voters may cast votes for up to 3 candidates in this race, and we think these three should earn your vote.

In January 2024, City College's accrediting commission put the college on warning (https://www.ccsf.edu/news/ccsf-receives-accreditation-determination-accjc), and it faulted the trustees rather than the academics: the college met 116 of the 119 standards, and all three requirements it was ordered to fix concerned the Governing Board, which had to weigh the long-range fiscal implications of its decisions, act consistently with its own policies and bylaws, and let the chancellor administer Board policy without interference. The college did that work, and its accreditation was fully reaffirmed (https://growsf.org/news/2025-07-25-ccsf-accreditation/) in July 2025, with a permanent chancellor now in place. What has not been fixed is the money: the college's own projections show a structural deficit of $9.2M next year growing to $24.9M by 2030 (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/november-2026/erwin-tam/), the same year its next accreditation review comes due.

These three are already working together. Before answering our questionnaire, they went through the college's budget line by line as a group.

Ball is a college campus planner who has done this job at other California community colleges. He was a campus planner for Folsom Lake College's 2025 facilities master plan (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/november-2026/elijah-ball/) and worked on state capital funding proposals for Long Beach City College and Pasadena City College. His argument is that enrollment, academic programs, facilities, and money are one problem rather than four, and that trustees should be judging decisions against a five-year outlook instead of the next budget cycle. He wants the Board to track the college's 2024 enrollment plan against actual results, and to find a use for the Downtown Campus that closed this year.

Lace teaches at a Title I school, chairs her department, and sits on her school site council, which puts her on the SFUSD end of the pipeline to City College she wants to widen. She would expand Bridge to Success, the program that walks SFUSD seniors through enrolling at City College, and restore credit-recovery classes at high school campuses instead of only at the Mission Center. A licensed cosmetologist herself, she points out that San Francisco has no public college program (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/november-2026/monroe-lace/) in cosmetology, barbering, or manicuring, so students commute to San Bruno or Oakland, and that City College's career-technical graduates see an average 44% wage increase. She also takes on the third finding in that warning, the one about trustees interfering in the Chancellor's job.

"A trustee who promises to direct the hiring of specific employees or bypass the Chancellor from the dais misunderstands the office."

Monroe Lace, Public School Teacher

Tam, a former City College student, has spent 25 years as a municipal financial advisor and has worked with more than 30 California community colleges (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/november-2026/erwin-tam/) on their financing plans. He has diagnosed the college's money problem: enrollment has fallen by a quarter in a decade (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/november-2026/erwin-tam/#the-issues), and by his count a state guarantee that props up funding for shrinking colleges has grown from 6.6% to 19.1% of City College's state funding in four years. That guarantee will stay flat from here on, which Tam calls a fiscal cliff.

City College's next board inherits a deficit, an accreditation clock, and an enrollment problem. Ball knows how a campus gets built and paid for, Lace knows where the students would come from, and Tam knows how to read the books.

Source (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-voter-guide-november-2026-election#community-college-board)