The State Center Community College District may hire an auditor to help with the ongoing classification study affecting classified staff around the district.

 
The human resources department and the personnel commission disagree about the status of the study. In the September meeting of the personnel commission, the human resources department and the PC director offered conflicting reports in the status of the classification process that had been accomplished.

 
The Personnel Commission director, Elba Gomez, told the commissioners that they had completed up to 75 percent of the task.
Whereas Samara Campbell, the director of human resources for SCCCD, stated that progress was only 15-20 percent finished.

 
“We can’t even agree where we are,” Personnel Commissioner Tim Liermann said in the meeting.
Gomez offers some reasoning behind the discrepancy.

 
“Our process is different from theirs,” Gomez said. “When we finish a job description on our side, we need to get feedback from the manager to see if the job description and the duties are really accurate. Once we get that feedback, we have to get feedback from the employees.”

 
Other complications come in when the matter of collective bargaining agreements over job descriptions and contracts come into play.“A lot of the stuff that HR is wanting; we can’t give to them,” Gomez said. “We can’t share information with them without sharing it with the unions.”

 
The last time the district conducted a classification study was in 1990.
One of the problems with out-of-date job classifications is that technology has changed.
“Technology, services and equipment have significantly and dramatically changed since 1990,” Miguel Arias, the trustee for area five said. “Yet folks are still using those same job descriptions to do their current work. There has to be hundreds of staff working out of their classifications.”

 
The Rampage has been reporting on an on-going complaint about a similar matter with classified staff.
Making the matter worse is that when the classified study was approved back in 2012, the commission made it so that classified staff could not change classification while the study was being conducted.

 
To help expedite the process, George Cole, the executive director of the California School Personnel Commissioners Association, has been named as a possible resource for assisting with the process.

 
However, Gomez reported to the commission that his would only be an advisory position.
“He has no interest in doing a classification study,” Gomez said. He would be available to conduct an audit on the progress completed, according to Gomez and the human resources department.
Annette Loria, the interim vice chancellor of human resources, said that a contract for Cole’s work had already been written and was awaiting approval.

 
Both the personnel commission and the California School Employees Association raised a concern that conducting an audit might result in a delay of the process. If work was to be halted for the audit, a request to do so would have to first be submitted as an action item on the agenda for the commission’s next meeting.

 
“It’s hard to ask the staff to continue doing work until we hear from Mr. Cole,” Loria said. “I would hate to have us do something and then go in a different direction.”
Barbara Wilson, the first vice president for CSEA, said that the union’s position is that the process is taking too long. “We’re having someone come in to tell us where we are,” Wilson said. “We already know where we are.”