‘Nightmarish’ enrollment drop-off forces Oakland colleges to merge

Two East Bay community colleges will merge into one institution next year as officials look to reduce dropout rates and address declining enrollment.

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The plan to unite Laney College and Merritt College under a new name, Oakland City College, was approved on Tuesday during a meeting of the Peralta Community College Board of Trustees in a 6-2 vote. Both campuses would remain open following the merger, which is expected to take effect in fall 2027, according to the Peralta Community College District’s FAQ page. (The district’s other two campuses, College of Alameda and Berkeley City College, will continue to operate as separate institutions.)

According to the from the board, though Laney and Merritt colleges were founded during a “different demographic and economic era,” the district is now experiencing different problems, including a decline in enrollment. During the meeting, one of the trustees, Cindi Napoli-Abella Reiss, said the decline has been noticeable in the last 12 to 18 years. 

“The enrollment has decreased so much. It’s hard to fathom,” she said. 

Louis Quindlen, the board president, said he believes the merger is a way to continue adapting to the changing higher education landscape. 

“We change to meet the needs of the students in the room. To me, this program is exactly the same way,” he said. “… We have to get in a position where we can start growing and get out of that nightmarish hell.”

The yearslong problems 

The plan is part of the larger District Transformation Plan, first proposed by the district’s chancellor, Tammeil Gilkerson, in August 2025, according to the district’s website. The plan also calls for reassessing courses and programs, as well as providing an evening and weekend college, remote education, and dual enrollment with high schools. 

Tina Vasconcellos, the district’s vice chancellor, told trustees on Tuesday that too many students are leaving without degrees and that consolidating the colleges could help simplify the duplicate programs. She showed the board a list of dozens of degree programs offered across the district’s colleges, saying that about 90% of students enrolled in them do not complete the programs or transfer to another institution. Merging the two colleges would “pull away from competition with each other and to redirect resources,” Vasconcellos said, adding that the district would be able to “market and sort of package the programs in a way, schedule in a way, that students can achieve their goals.”

Another major factor behind the district’s plan is its long-running budget challenges, which date back to at least 2013, according to its website. In a statement shared with SFGATE, Gilkerson also said the district has been facing budget shortfalls, declining enrollment and operational problems “for years.”

“What is different now is that we finally have the opportunity to look beyond the next budget reduction and ask a larger question about what we want Peralta to become,” Gilkerson said. “… For me, the transformation effort is about creating the conditions to better serve students, strengthen pathways, and build a district that can plan, invest, innovate, and grow rather than continually reacting to the next challenge in front of us.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, Gilkerson said the district has cut nearly $28 million in recent years. 

“Those decisions have not been easy,” she said. “… We can’t reduce our way forward.” 

‘Students have no idea what’s going on’

Although the district has said the merger will help mitigate the financial crisis, district officials have not provided detailed information about how it will do so. Trustee Nicky González Yuen mentioned the ambiguity surrounding the formal execution of the merger and noted that Nitasha Sawhney, a legal counsel at the meeting, had said the legal research was “inconclusive.”

That ambiguity has created fierce opposition from some students, faculty and community members, including during Tuesday’s meeting. 

“Merritt College students have no idea what’s going on about this merge,” Ronniedith Dimapasoc Ramos, a student at the college, said during the meeting. 

Opponents of the current proposal, including Ramos, said they are worried about how the merger could affect certain student resources. “We talk about this merging, but Merritt College doesn’t even have enough food on our campus. How is Merritt College going to welcome the Laney students and all the other students on our campus when our cafeteria closes at exactly 3 p.m.?” she said. “… So when we think about this merge, think about the basic needs of the students.”

Paulina Gonzalez-Brito, a vice president of the board and a trustee, said the district should weigh if it’s moving “too fast” with the planning process and ensure that student programs aren’t negatively affected.

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“I’m not opposed to the merger at all,” Gonzalez-Brito said. “… There are programs within that structure that do serve the vulnerable students and more disenfranchised students very, very well. And we need to protect those as much as we can while we’re making these transformational changes.”

Johnnie Williams, a professor at Laney College, also said he is worried about the trustees making a quick decision about the colleges while faculty members and students are on summer break. He also said the limited information about the plan is worrisome.

“The details are not clear. And to me, that’s a gamble. So to gamble in this community with the people we serve, I agree with the comment that at least another year makes sense. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but I know it’s wrong right now,” he said.

Gisele Giorgi, a professor at Merritt College, also spoke at Tuesday’s meeting and pointed to a petition she created that advocates against the merger.

“I was greatly surprised to find myself two days ago writing a petition to ask someone to slow down,” Giorgi told the trustees. “… There are so many questions still left unanswered. We really need to plan better if we’re gonna do this thing, we need to do it really well.”

The petition opposing the merger has garnered more than 300 signatures as of Friday afternoon. Giorgi wrote that the merger “will result in a funding loss of $3 million to $12 million every year” and that the decision “was made without adequately considering the voices and needs of those it impacts most — the students, faculty, and staff.” 

However, Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for the district, told SFGATE in an email that the budget figures detailed in the petition are “not accurate.” 

He said the district is “better off” with the transformation plan as it navigates its future budget plans. The merger would create “administrative cost savings and projected efficiencies,” and the bulk of its allocated funding is based on the number of full-time students, not the number of colleges, he added.

“To put this in perspective, many of our district-wide contracts include a cost per college (not per campus) and we expect those contracts to reflect appropriate savings when renegotiated,” Johnson said. “Additionally, it’s much more efficient to manage three colleges than four.”

Another concern from faculty members is that merging the two colleges is problematic because it would dilute the individual legacies tied to the two schools. 

In 1966, for example, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, the co-founders of the Black Panther Party, first met while they were Merritt College students. And Laney College, founded in 1927 by Joseph Clarence Laney, was originally called the Oakland Central Trade School, which is where people could receive the rare benefit of free vocational education. 

Kevin Pina, a faculty member and an alumnus of Merritt College, said there would be “long-term ramifications” for the public, faculty and students if the trustees moved forward with the plan. 

“They and the legacy of our two campuses are too important to just make quick, expedient decisions,” Pina said at the meeting, where he mentioned mentors such as Norbert Bischof, after whom scholarships have been named.