Unit 3 Update: Article 21.13.3 Progress on Student Assignments & Classroom Instruction

On Friday, October 23, the Union met with representatives from the CDCR Office of Labor Relations (Tess Thompson) and the Office of Academic and Career Development (OACD) (Troy Tenhet) as part of Bargaining Unit 3’s Student Assignment Committee. This committee, which meets quarterly, derives from Article 21.13.3 of our MOU and has been active for just over a year. Union members present at this meeting included Bargaining Unit 3 Chair Robert Holtz; Alternate Vice Chair Alex Hamilton; and Unit 3 member and teacher Jeff Belo from Valley State Prison.

The goal of the Student Assignment Committee is to examine assignment tendencies across different worksites and collaborate with management representatives to solve outstanding assignment-related issues. At its inception, this committee was facing misassignment issues at every worksite, with percentages of misassigned IPs reaching 80-90% at some sites. Through the work of this committee and the changes being implemented at worksites around the state, those numbers have drastically improved.

The most recent data shows sharp declines in misassignments, with most sites sitting at misassignment rates below 40%, and some sites nearing 10%. This is a direct result of our represented employees around the state lifting up these issues and bringing attention to a growing problem that directly affects the quality of classroom instruction at every level.

In the spirit of collaboration, management and the Union agreed to continue to look at this issue and work toward successive improvements. The Union shared with the committee the various struggles teachers face almost daily related to misassignments, including information about waitlists, internal promotions, and the processes by which IPs are reassigned to the correct program levels. OACD and the Office of Labor Relations (OLR) are committed to working with the Union on this front and are actively investigating several of the issues that were discussed. 

As always, we are committed to transparency in our work processes and will continue to share updates from the various committees that have Unit 3 representation.