North Idaho College Awaits Its Fate

After years of scrutiny over governance issues that included violations of open meetings laws and other infractions, North Idaho College will soon learn whether it will keep or lose accreditation.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities will convene Tuesday through Friday for its January meeting. Commissioners will determine whether NIC adequately resolved outstanding concerns driven by a former board majority that emphasized culture war issues at the rural Idaho college, tried to push out its president and hired personnel with political connections to board members.

A decision on the college’s accreditation status will be delivered within 30 days of the meeting.

College officials hope the commissioners see the progress they say NIC has made over the last year, resolving various governance issues raised by NWCCU as it sought to comply with accreditation standards after a flurry of warnings that culminated in a show-cause status in February 2023, meaning the college must “present evidence why its accreditation should not be withdrawn.” The sanction highlighted multiple governance issues driven by an exceptionally erratic board.

Years of Conflict

North Idaho’s clash with its accreditor came as a result of thorny governance issues marked by bitter clashes on its five-member elected Board of Trustees, with meetings that occasionally devolved into name-calling and appeared at times to be fueled by personal and ideological agendas.

The high drama began at the small college in Coeur d’Alene in 2021 with allegations of abuse and aggressive behavior toward employees and others by then-chair Todd Banducci. The firing of former president Rick MacLennan without cause that same year prompted a successful lawsuit against the college, and the resignation of three board members (one amid residency questions) in 2022 prompted the state to temporarily appoint three new trustees who served out the remainder of their predecessors’ terms.

While the reconstituted board managed to hire a new president in 2022, membership was reshuffled after elections that year. Two members who often voted together—Banducci and Greg McKenzie—were joined by Mike Waggoner, all of whom had ties to the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, a group some considered far-right even for rural Idaho. With a new board majority in place, governance issues at NIC escalated rapidly in 2023.

The new majority seated after Election Day in 2022 began by hiring Art Macomber as the college’s attorney in a surprise move that the board would later admit violated open meetings laws. The college’s prior attorney, Marc Lyons, had resigned after the election, writing that his services were “no longer desired” by the board majority. Macomber, who has since resigned, had political connections to the board majority.

The board’s next act was to sideline President Nick Swayne, placing him on administrative leave in December after he cautioned trustees that they had violated open meetings and procurement law by abruptly picking Macomber without public notice or a bidding process. In Swayne’s place, the board hired an interim president while Macomber conducted a nebulous investigation into Swayne’s hiring by the prior board. (The interim president was given a contract that paid him more than $235,000 a year, $5,000 more than Swayne’s annual salary.) However, Swayne was reinstated in March 2023 after a successful legal challenge to the board’s attempted ouster.

Amid the volatility, NWCCU issued a series of escalating warnings.

The accreditor first contacted North Idaho leadership in April 2021 in response to complaints about alleged noncompliance with nondiscrimination, governing board and academic freedom standards. The accreditor then raised further concerns about governance standards in December 2021 related to MacLennan’s firing. (The Idaho State Board of Education also raised concerns about “the current trajectory” of NIC that same month.) In April 2022, NWCCU officially sanctioned NIC with a warning letter about noncompliance with governance and institutional integrity standards. In December of that year, after Swayne was temporarily sidelined, the accreditor threatened NIC with show-cause status. By February 2023, NWCCU followed through, slapping NIC with a show- cause sanction that was later extended in July of that year.

In a May 2023 report, accreditors wrote that “NIC’s governing board’s actions over the past two years have created risks to institutional quality and integrity.” Among their concerns were “multiple lawsuits resulting from Board actions” and violations of open meetings laws; high leadership turnover, including having two presidents under contract; the hiring process for Macomber; and multiple votes of no confidence in the board by faculty and staff that trustees had not responded to.

When NWCCU extended NIC’s show-cause status in July, it called on the board to address the no-confidence resolutions and “resolve current litigation, governance, and accreditation issues that have had a current and immediate impact” on college finances, among various other issues.

Swayne, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, noted that the issues fell on the governance side, which is also reflected in NWCCU’s findings. Academics at the college, he said, are strong.

An Optimistic Outlook

As the concerns about the loss of accreditation continued—often becoming a heated focal point in public comments at board meetings—NIC hired outside consultants, such as the Association of Community College Trustees to help develop board policies and interpersonal relationships.

While that process seemed to help, Swayne doesn’t believe a lack of training was the issue.

“I don’t want to discount the value of the consulting, but two years of consulting to try to teach board members, adults—well-educated adults—how to behave properly in a board meeting doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Swayne said. “So there was something else going on. I can’t tell you what that was—I don’t know.”

The notion of something sinister underlying the actions of the former board majority has been a common theme at meetings in recent years, with speakers questioning the trustees’ motives. Local residents often demanded the board majority explain their motivations and offered theories of their own, sometimes tinged with conspiracy, including speculation that the three trustees aimed to shut the college down in order to free up prime real estate for development.

Swayne suggested there was a “hangover from COVID” at play given that opposition to masks and vaccines was a “main issue” for the majority bloc of trustees until the coronavirus pandemic waned. Emboldened trustees, he suspects, were in search of another cause after that fight ended. And some, like Banducci, had alleged the existence of a liberal “deep state” at the community college, particularly among faculty.

After some employees voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Banducci claimed on a podcast that “those agendas are being woven into the curriculum. And, you know, who controls the kids, who controls their minds, who controls the college student, you know, controls the voter of the future and controls the populace.” Banducci also allegedly berated MacLennan’s wife for being a Hillary Clinton support, according to a former trustee who called for Banducci to step down in 2021.

But with increasing accreditor scrutiny, there appeared to be a softening of the board, starting with Waggoner, who often sided with Banducci and McKenzie but later emerged as a swing vote.

Swayne said he noticed the change around May 2024. And once Waggoner’s voting patterns shifted, Banducci and McKenzie fell in behind him. Meetings, which had often stretched on for hours due to heated public comment periods and legal wrangling, became shorter, more cordial and nonconfrontational.

Last fall, Banducci and Waggoner decided not to run for re-election and McKenzie lost his bid for another term, putting an end to the board majority that was behind many of the decisions that prompted scrutiny from accreditors as three new trustees were seated. (McKenzie and Banducci did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed. Waggoner could not be reached.)

Swayne said there were “seven months of relatively normalized meetings with the old board.” And now, with a reconfigured board, he believes NIC’s governance issues have been resolved.

If NIC does lose accreditation over governance issues, it would be an anomaly. Typically, accreditation is stripped due to severe financial or academic issues, which NWCCU has not found. Governance concerns are typically met with warnings, which NWCCU issued in multiple cases before taking further action.

NWCCU president Sonny Ramaswamy wrote by email that it would be “inappropriate to speak about any decisions the Board of Commissioners will make [on] North Idaho College, before they have acted” and noted that the process will follow an established accreditation actions policy.

While Swayne declined to predict the outcome, he believes the college has made significant progress on accreditation concerns and “started meeting the standards back in May of 2024.” He’s hopeful that a room full of more than two dozen commissioners will see it the same way.