Professional Development Requirement Status: On Hold

As some of you know, in the Employee Newsletter of December 8, 2017, the District Office announced a new policy requiring 19 annual hours of professional development for all employees in the DCCCD. A general professional development requirement was first proposed and approved by the Board of Trustees at the September, 2017, Board meeting (see pdf file here), although the implementation details of the policy had not at that point been fully developed.

The Faculty Council had addressed this issue directly with the district HR director and the Academic Vice Presidents at a meeting in July of last year. It was our understanding that a committee or task force would be formed to research the idea and develop reasonable guidelines and expectations for ongoing professional development, with potential implementation in Fall, 2018. Unfortunately, this did not happen. As with many other things, this new professional development policy was crafted without any input from impacted stakeholders—faculty, staff, and administrators alike. The Council was very surprised to see not only an official announcement of this requirement at the tail end of the fall semester but also fully developed CAOP and EDGE documents, posted in MyPortal (see files here).

In meetings with both Chancellor May and Vice Chancellor Lonon this month, the Faculty Council shared its concerns about the lack of stakeholder involvement in the development and roll-out of this new policy, after receiving numerous questions and complaints from our members. From these discussions, we have secured an understanding that the 19-Hour Professional Development Requirement is to be on hold for the time being as a process to review, refine, and operationalize the policy is undertaken. We are also given to understand that all of the Colleges have recently been informed of this pause.

In the meantime, the Faculty Council suggests that every DCCFA member develops a disciplined habit to record, on his/her IAP document, every professional development experience he/she undertakes. The IAP document can be updated throughout the year and shared with the dean at every meeting as part of the regular evaluation cycle.

We will keep the membership apprised of developments with this as they occur.