BMCC to revamp its prison education program
By Terry Murry on Wednesday, April 12th, 2023 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – The Blue Mountain Community College Board of Education has approved the administration pursuing the Pell for Prisons program offered by the U.S. Department of Education. That means that the college’s current agreement with the Oregon Department of Corrections and BMCC’s 17 certified and classified employees will sunset when the current contract expires on June 30.
“The college needs to pivot and begin a new and different course,” BMCC President J. Mark Browning said. “There is a future for BMCC to provide for-credit courses that dovetail with the new emphasis coming from the federal Department of Education through the Pell for Prisons program. This new avenue aligns with our goals to grow enrollment while serving our regional communities.”
BMCC supplies basic adult education and general equivalency diplomas at Eastern Oregon Correction Institution, Two Rivers Correctional Institution, and the Powder River Correctional Facility. The ABE and GED courses are not for credit, so they are not used in fulltime enrollment calculations for post-secondary funding.
Pell for Prisons provides eligibility for inmates to enroll in for-credit general education courses through a local community college for the first time since the 1990s.
“This is a new venture for us,” Browning said. “We have courses, faculty, and the ability to take those courses to our regional correctional facilities to give adults in custody those foundational classes they need to prepare for their next chapters upon completion of their sentences.”
Browning said the federal program will allow the college to offset costs through tuition that cannot be realized under the current inmate education programs. Current instructors impacted by the end to the current contract are being encouraged to apply for open positions for which they are qualified. Impacted classified staff will undergo a bumping process, as outlined in their current labor agreement. That process provides for reassignment of classified personnel to open positions for which they are qualified. The change impacts five TRCI instructors, five EOCI instructors, one PRCI instructor, a diagnostician, an on-call instructor and four classified employees.
The board approved the proposal 5 to 1.
