Luckily, a community college in northern Idaho is being saved

If you are in favor of higher education – and that includes some, but clearly not all, voters today – then the general election had a clear bright spot in the Idaho panhandle: voters’ decision to fill three seats on the board of the North Idaho College Coeur d’ Alene.

Consider this season something to be grateful for in the Gem State.

The university is on the verge of losing its accreditation, which could effectively mean the end of the university. This is neither a subtle threat nor a controversial or unimportant threat. The college’s future hinged on voters’ decisions to fill three crucial vacancies on what until recently had been a mostly obscure governing body. Community college boards are quiet and publicly hidden – like many offices in government – as long as they stay out of trouble.

North Idaho College has no inherent massive problems. There is nothing about teachers, students, administrators, facilities, or anyone else (vendors, community partners) raising any red flags. It has long operated like a regular community college, offering some college courses and others aimed at career and technical training. There’s nothing particularly controversial about it.

Until a few years ago, the Kootenai County Republican organization decided to turn the nonpartisan board into a culture war battleground (and campaigns with vivid apocalyptic imagery). With the support of this organization, which has been politically dominant in Kootenai for several decades, new members were elected to shake things up at the college.

Shake them, that’s what they did. Their control period, which has spanned not all but most of the past four years — since voters elected a majority in November 2020 that set out to destroy normal practices at the college — has been a time of chaos and the turmoil at the university. This included fired presidents, lawyers, and others, as well as a broader mix of key players, some clearly quite capable, others clearly not. The college had been in endless turmoil for years, and the reason was easy to pinpoint: the elected board.

Finally, the regional organization that accredits colleges intervened and warned that the college’s credentials, reflected in the usefulness and recognition of its educational program by the outside world, were in imminent danger of being lost.

This appears to have finally caught the attention of voters in Kootenai County. That wasn’t all of them, and not nearly enough to trigger an electoral landslide, but enough to change the makeup of the board in a direction aimed at restoring the college’s traditional role as a community college.