A teacher walks down the concrete hall of a housing unit at one of California's prison reception centers, pausing in front of a cell.

Here, for a half-hour each week, the instructor teaches the inmate through the cell door, amid the din of prison life. On their own, inmates complete packets of educational material -- a kind of distance learning.

For the state's prison system, this scenario -- one of the solutions the California Department of Corrections has come up with in its quest to save $400 million this fiscal year -- may soon become reality.

The Bridging Program would allow inmates to earn day-for-day credits while serving time at reception centers, thus increasing their chances of winning parole sooner and, in turn, decreasing the prison population and saving the state money.

But prison teachers, backed by their union, vehemently oppose the idea of teaching cell to cell, labeling it ineffective and potentially dangerous.

"We don't see slipping packets under cell doors and shouting lessons through bars as educational," said Richard Rios, a physical education teacher for the California Youth Authority who is also vice chairman for the California State Employees Association *Bargaining Unit 3. "We don't see that as viable."

The program was scheduled to begin Jan. 5, but members of the Service Employees International Union Local 1000 succeeded last month in getting a temporary restraining order issued in Imperial County to stop the department from initiating the program in the 11 reception centers statewide.

A hearing has been scheduled for Friday, when a judge will decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction, which would suspend the program until an arbitrator can review it to determine if it violates health and safety provisions, said Paul Harris, assistant chief counsel for the CSEA. Safety is a primary concern for the teachers, who would be instructing inmates without protective gear or armed escorts.

The Bridging Program was one of the solutions adopted by the Legislature after $35 million was cut from the department's education budget last year. Vocational programs -- which teach job and life skills -- were cut at most institutions and the instructors were given surplus notices.

All vocational programs were cut at California State Prison, Sacramento. Only educational programs remain, some of which are done through "cell learning," said Lt. Fred Schroeder, acting public information officer for the prison. Only one vocational program -- shoe repair -- was cut at Folsom State Prison, but funding was shifted and the program was reopened as an institutional support program.

Vocational instructors displaced by the cuts will have first shot at the 160 teaching positions available in the reception centers, though without relocation funding, said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the CDC.

"We're also looking to try to get vocational instructors retrained and recertified to do this," he said.

While prison educators agree that educating inmates sooner is necessary, they argue that classrooms, not cell-to-cell lessons, are needed.

"We do want our people at these institutions, we just would like it to be a more credible program than this," said Andy Hsia-Coron, a teacher at Soledad State Prison and chairman of Bargaining Unit 3. "The idea that the teacher is going to the prison door, teaching through that door and giving a packet to an inmate, and that having a positive effect on the inmate is ludicrous."

Prison officials say teaching in a classroom setting isn't a possibility, in part because inmates at reception centers are still being classified and their behavior assessed.

"A reception center does not lend itself to a classroom setting," Heimerich said.

But establishing a classroom culture in the housing unit would be nearly impossible, prison teachers counter.

"Most of the time they're going to be around their peers where there's power struggles and pecking orders," Hsia-Coron said. "They're not going to view themselves as students in those wings. The odds of an inmate even wanting to appear studious in the housing unit is very low."

Steve Steurer, executive director of the Correctional Education Association, a national prison education group, said the concept of distance learning in prison isn't unheard of, but it's usually reserved for inmates who are in protective custody or on lockdown, he said.

Distance learning at reception centers, he said, simply would not work. In Maryland, testing at reception centers had to be canceled because inmates were purposely flunking the placement exams, he said.

"During the first weeks of incarceration, inmates are angry and not in a mood to be instructed," he said during an interview from his Maryland home. "Then have a teacher come in and have a packet for someone who may be illiterate? Just look at that and imagine how ineffective that's likely to be."