Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Instructor Conduct Qap topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
POST staff seek clearer rules on instructor conduct after QAP finds unsatisfactory instruction and two decertifications
Summary
POST staff presented options to regulate instructor conduct in certified courses after the POST Quality Assessment Program found multiple instructor performance problems and prompted at least two course decertifications this year.
POST staff asked the advisory committee for input on adopting regulations to address instructor conduct and presenter responsibilities after staff reviews found gaps in existing authorities.
Law enforcement consultant Andrew Mendonca told the committee that existing Commission Regulation 1057 addresses course certification and decertification but does not set a code of conduct or performance expectations for instructors; POST policy TDC‑4 governs complaints internally but is not binding on presenters. Staff recommended exploring regulatory language that would create clearer expectations for instructor behavior, outline presenter responsibilities when complaints arise, and provide a narrower path for addressing performance problems identified during certified courses.
Much of the committee discussion focused on the appropriate “unit of regulation.” Chief counsel William “Toby” Darden warned that certifying individual instructors on a statewide basis would raise significant legal and due‑process issues and expand POST’s relationship beyond presenters to individual persons. He explained that the commission’s present enforcement levers are aimed at presenters: POST approves a course presentation and the presenter is responsible for the instructors listed for that presentation. Removing an individual instructor’s ability to teach statewide would require procedures that could involve repeated hearings and heightened legal exposure.
Bridal Neumeier, bureau chief for Training Program Services, described the Quality Assessment Program (QAP), run under contract by South Bay Regional Consortium. QAP assessors visit presentations to validate course delivery; they review course documents and “evaluate every instructor that would talk at a particular presentation.” Neumeier summarized year‑to‑date QAP results: with about $700,000 in budget the program completed 74 course evaluations, producing 148 instructor evaluations, roughly 660 recommendations for improvement and 3,768 instructional hours assessed. QAP returned “unsatisfactory performance” findings in 12 cases this year; staff worked with presenters to require additional training or to remove instructors, and POST has decertified one course this year and was processing a second decertification.
Committee members from community college academies and private presenters urged care on collective‑bargaining impacts, tenure issues and the legal complexity of statewide instructor certification. Several presenters noted cooperation with POST on corrective training is generally positive; private presenters and academies sometimes choose to stop using instructors identified as problematic. Advisory members recommended exploring remedies that do not require statewide instructor certification — for example, giving POST clearer authority to require presenters to correct instruction, empowering temporary suspensions of course presentations, and improving QAP resourcing and follow‑up. Staff said these are the kinds of policy questions they plan to study further and possibly bring forward as specific regulatory proposals.
Ending: POST staff will continue to explore options — ranging from a narrower presenter‑focused regulatory approach to the more complex option of certifying individual instructors — and will seek further input from legal staff, bargaining representatives and the academy community before returning to the commission with draft regulation.
