SF college chancellor placed on leave amid financial misconduct allegations

City College of San Francisco Chancellor Kimberlee Messina has been placed on paid administrative leave following several allegations of financial misconduct, CCSF trustees confirmed to SFGATE Friday. 

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In a Sept. 11 letter obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, board of trustees President Aliya Chisti described allegations that the chancellor took unauthorized vacations, added stipends and engaged in other financial misconduct on top of earning a yearly salary of $350,000. Chisti sent the letter to Mary Grace Esteban, Messina’s executive assistant, who first made the allegations in a separate letter dated Sept. 4. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

In a statement to SFGATE, Chisti confirmed that an independent investigator is reviewing the allegations, adding that “this is a non-disciplinary, interim step and does not reflect any finding.”

CCSF, which is one of the largest community colleges in California and serves about 19,000 students, has faced several major financial woes over the years: In 2016, the state ordered the institution to pay $39 million because it couldn’t prove that it taught about 16,000 students from 2011 to 2014. It was so poorly governed, it nearly lost its accreditation, resulting in a yearslong battle that finally ended in 2017. After the pandemic, the university faced yet another crisis: An army of “ghost students,” or bots, enrolled online and posed as real students in order to steal millions of dollars in financial aid, SFGATE previously reported.  

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In the meantime, “David Yee, Vice Chancellor of Academic and Institutional Affairs, is serving as Acting Chancellor to ensure continuity,” Chisti wrote. “The Board is unable to comment further while the review is underway.”