North Idaho College trustees exhibited better governance in recent months, and morale on campus shows “tentative” improvement, but no one interviewed expressed high confidence that the trajectory is sustainable, according to a report released Thursday by an evaluation team that visited the college last month. 

The evaluation is the last review before the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities’ (NWCCU) January meeting, where it will decide whether to return NIC to good standing. 

NIC has been on “show cause” status since February 2023, with complaints leading to the accreditation review dating back to 2021. 

While NIC has made significant progress on the issues the NWCCU raised, the main problem remaining ahead of the evaluation visit in October was board governance. 

The report was released days ahead of Tuesday’s election, where three of the five board seats appear on the ballot. Two clear factions emerged among candidates.

One group — Eve Knudtsen, Rick Durbin and Mary Havercroft— is focused on retaining accreditation, and has been endorsed by the advocacy group. 

The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee has endorsed incumbent Trustee Greg McKenzie and candidates William Lyons and Michael Angiletta. That group argues the root cause of the accreditation issues is not board governance, but the NWCCU’s attempts to force diversity, equity and inclusion policies on NIC. 

EdNews’ coverage of the race can be found here.

The visit

The four-person peer evaluation team visited NIC on Oct. 14 and 15, and addressed 10 NWCCU recommendations from the previous visits. 

The evaluators met with the president, senior leaders, students, faculty and staff. They met with four of the five trustees individually, and also met with the board of trustees as a whole. 

“Once again, the campus community was universally welcoming, candid, solution minded, and even good-humored during the visit,” the report reads. “It’s a small wonder that, at the operations level, NIC had good news to share — revived enrollments, high-achieving academic programs, and new initiatives in the community and in support of student success.” 

Progress report 

The trustees have made steps to adhere to their appropriate roles and responsibilities, professional conduct and ethics, and handling of grievances with the help of two consultants from the Association of Community College Trustees, the report found. 

The board made concrete steps including: 

• Adopting policies on board roles, conduct, ethics and evaluation.
• Identifying board goals and a plan to achieve them.
• Incorporating recurring informational reports on agendas.
• Sustained collaborative agenda-setting between the president and board chair.
• Adopting a board orientation policy. 
• Initiating an annual public affirmation on the proper roles of a trustee.

Evaluators found that those steps resulted in a “procedurally smooth” adoption of the 2025 budget and approval of the college’s strategic planning goals. Recent board meetings are also shorter and more professional. 

“While these trends are encouraging, however, the team struggled to find convincing evidence that they are durable,” the report found. 

The college’s report to the NWCCU focused on the May 22 board meeting as an example of improvement. But even at that meeting, there was an attempt to de-fund college memberships in community organizations, the evaluators noted. 

Issues like incivility, off-agenda topics and “muddled” document-handling surfaced in meetings as recent as March and April, the report found. 

The board has completed “substantial” training with ACCT consultants, which appears to be paying off, the report said.

Current Board Chair Mike Waggoner has led in a respectful and professional manner that increased the level of decorum, the report found. However, some expressed uncertainties related to his motivation. Waggoner is not running for re-election.

The campus community expressed “only tentative faith” that the recent changes were sustainable, the report said. The NIC community also “almost universally” did not feel the board had ever addressed the repeated votes of no confidence from faculty, staff and students.

“Members of employee constituent groups stated that they had little confidence that the current board would consistently act in the best interest of the college long-term,” the report reads. “Furthermore, they stated that the loss of trust will extend to the next board that will emerge after the November 2024 elections. The new board will have to work to gain the confidence of employee constituent groups.”

Some issues have been resolved. For example, NIC allowed Interim President Gregory South’s contract to expire, leaving President Nick Swayne as the college’s sole leader. Many of the lawsuits against the college were settled. Also the college saw an enrollment bump for the first time in years.

The evaluators raised concerns over the financial impact of the trustees’ decision to re-join the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCCA). 

“NIC’s current budget model, with athletics at the center, remains a risk to the college and is not sustainable in terms of governance, finance, and personnel,” the report says. “As recently as May 2024’s board meeting, the vice president for finance and business affairs warned that the continued use of the reserve fund will deplete reserves below the recommended levels.”

While the evaluators found evidence of governance improvements, they also saw reasons to be cautious about the longevity of the changes. 

 “In interviews onsite, no one expressed high confidence in the sustainability of the board’s current trajectory,” the report reads. “Finally, as detailed in other sections of this report, NIC’s rate of progress on individual concerns has been mixed, leaving a number of items in need of continued, urgent attention.” 

Read the full report here.