Mandatory Civil Rights Training

Forest Washington 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Service Office Washington, DC 20250

File Code: 1700 Date: February 5, 2008 Route To:

Subject: Mandatory Civil Rights Training

To: Regional Foresters, Station Directors, Area Director, IITF Director, Deputy Chiefs and WO Directors

REPLY DUE FEBRUARY 29, 2008

By mandate of the Secretary of Agriculture, all USDA employees must complete training on Reasonable Accommodations and Recognizing and Preventing Reprisal by February 29, 2008. All Forest Service employees include: permanent, part-time, seasonal, temporary, term, student trainees, and enrollees in the student assistant programs. Contractors, volunteers or partners will not have to complete this training. Reasonable Accommodations training was originally placed on each employee’s learning plan in AgLearn last fiscal year and should have been completed by March 31, 2007. Our records indicate that as of January 12, 2008, all but 6,872 employees completed this training. Those employees who have not completed this training are required to take the Reasonable Accommodations training by February 29, 2008. The Reasonable Accommodations Course still appears in the AgLearn Learning Plan of those employees who have already completed it, but it will be removed after February 29, 2008. Recognizing and Preventing Reprisal is a new training requirement through AgLearn. While I understand many of you may have received this training in another format through your various units, this training must be completed or certified through AgLearn by the due date in order to receive credit on your training plan. Please note that there are three parts to this year’s training. There is a Reasonable Accommodations Course, a Recognizing and Preventing Reprisal Course and Civil Rights Readme file. You must complete the readme file first. If you have not taken Reasonable Accommodations or Preventing Reprisal, you will need to take both. Again, if you have completed Reasonable Accommodations, you only need to take the Preventing Reprisal course. If taking the courses online is not possible, because of technical or access problems, two alternative formats will be provided:  A CD will be made available upon request from you Civil Rights Director, and  A PDF version of the training courses will be available on the Civil Rights Website. Completion of the courses via an alternative method must still be recorded in AgLearn to obtain proper credit for course completion. To facilitate recording of course completion, line officers must certify to their immediate line supervisor that all of their employees have successfully completed the training. Regional Foresters, Station Directors, and the IITF, Northern Area, and WO Staff Directors must provide the overall completion certification for their units by

It’s Cool to Be Safe Printed on Recycled Paper Regional Foresters, Station Directors, Area Director, IITF Director, Deputy Chiefs 2 and WO Directors

February 29, 2008. Send the overall certification by official correspondence to [email protected]. More information about the certification process, including more detailed instructions, can be found at http://fsweb.hcm.fs.fed.us/training/mandatory_trng.php. We expect that we will be able to provide line officers with non-completion lists again this year, but it is still the line officer’s responsibility to ensure that all their employees have completed the training, regardless of whether we are able to obtain a non-completion list. The immediate supervisor must be able to produce a copy of their employee certificate of completion if requested during an audit or review. Please have the employees communicate with your Civil Rights Director if they require assistance in completing either of the alternative methods or if they have general questions concerning the training requirement. For question or problems about eAuthentication or logging into AgLearn please contact the USDA eAuth Help Desk by email at [email protected] or by phone at 800-457-3642. For problems using AgLearn, once you have logged in or with running the online course, please contact the AgLearn Help Desk at [email protected] or call 866-633-9394. I appreciate your cooperation in meeting these training requirements. If you have any additional questions, please contact Eurial Turner, Assistant Director, Civil Rights at 202-205-1585.

/s/ Hank Kashdan HANK KASHDAN Deputy Chief for Business Operations cc: Debra Muse Eurial Turner