With a vote on North Idaho College’s accreditation status expected in January, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities issued its final report to the college last week. It offers a mixed outlook on the beleaguered community college in Coeur d’Alene, once again highlighting governance issues as the key concern.
The Northwest Commission has issued NIC numerous warnings about its chaotic governance, which has included Board of Trustees meetings devolving into dramatic events fraught with personal attacks and occasional profanity. As in past reports, the accreditor noted that aside from board matters, the college functions well.
“All the currently remaining issues deal with board governance,” NIC noted in a news release.
North Idaho College has been on show cause status since February of last year, following a series of warnings from NWCCU. The accreditor has criticized the five-member board for repeatedly violating open meetings laws, trying to push out the president and replace him with an interim, and bypassing a formal bid process to hire an attorney with no higher education experience and financial ties to three trustees who typically form a lockstep majority.
That may be changing: NWCCU said in the 14-page report released last week that “over recent months, North Idaho College’s board has taken steps to promote adherence to appropriate roles and responsibilities, expectations, professional conduct and ethics, and handling of grievances.”
Still, the report noted that the NWCCU team “struggled to find convincing evidence that [these trends] are durable” and warned that “old patterns of operational overreach, occasional incivility, off-agenda topics, and muddled document-handling” were still visible.
NIC’s board, which is elected, will see some turnover soon. Todd Banducci, a former board chair who led efforts to push out college administrators, is not running for re-election, nor is current chair Mike Waggoner, who regularly votes with Banducci. Greg McKenzie, another former board chair and the third member of the hyperconservative majority voting bloc, is running for re-election.