Save NIC candidates sweep North Idaho College trustee races

The three candidates backed by Save NIC swept the North Idaho College Board of Trustees races.

The victory is a clear sign that their message of maintaining accreditation at the college landed with Kootenai County voters.

Eve Knudtsen bested incumbent Greg McKenzie with 55.7% of the vote to McKenzie’s 44.3%.

Rick Durbin won 52.3% of the vote to William Lyons’ 47.8%.

The closest race was between retired teacher Mary Havercroft with 51.2% to recent Oregon transplant Michael Angiletta’s 48.8%.

The three trustee-elects will officially take over at the November 20 board of trustees meeting. They will. have just a few weeks to address concerns from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities before the commission reached a decision on NIC’s accreditation status.

The central issue standing in the way of retaining accreditation, an evaluation report released last week maintained, has been good governance. The college has until the April United States Department of Education deadline to return to good standing with the NWCCU.

McKenzie, Lyons and Angiletta were endorsed by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee and ran on a platform of “Make NIC Great Again.”

As a group, the KCRCC candidates didn’t see governance as the main issue. Instead, they say the NWCCU’s push for diversity, equity and inclusion is at the heart of the accreditation battle.

Knudtsen, Havercroft, and Durbin argued a loss of accreditation would put the school in jeopardy. Their main goal for running was to retain accreditation and continue educational opportunities proper for North Idahoans.

Knudtsen woke up Wednesday morning and started getting ready for work, like most other days as she said she got dressed had her time with God.

“I’m thanking him for all the blessings that he has bestowed on me and now what he has done for our college,” Knudtsen said.

Knudtsen said she’s ready to work hard the next few weeks to prove to the NWCCU that the new board is capable of good governance. The NWCCU is set to make a decision on NIC’s status at their January meeting.

“We’re going to have a board of trustees that’s going to listen, that’s going to address issues of no confidence, that’s going to work with the president,” Knudtsen said, citing issues brought up in the college’s latest evaluation report released last week.

Durbin said Wednesday morning the three new trustee-elects are excited to work with the current board minority to resolve accreditation issues.

“Just super blessed to have the opportunity to serve NIC,” Durbin said. “I’m excited to roll up our sleeves and get to work.”

Havercroft said she was “on a high” after the final results came in Wednesday morning before thanking her supporters. She too noted she expects to work well with the current board minority.

“I just think that we’re going to be able to work well together and we’re going to be able to get a lot of things done,” Havercroft said.

The candidates endorsed by the KCRCC did not immediately respond to request for comment Wednesday morning.

Chair of the central committee, Brent Regan, touted the KCRCC’s success on election night, with candidates the party endorsed winning 25 out of 28 races. The three NIC trustee races were the exception.

“I am very proud of the candidates and the campaigns they ran,” Regan wrote in an email. “I wish the new NIC Trustee elects all the best and look forward to North Idaho College continuing on its current upward trajectory.”

Christa Hazel, who helped found the advocacy group Save NIC, was thrilled with the results.

“We had a clear concise message that our college matters and that we had just been subjected to drama, excess spending,” she said.”I’m just really pleased that our voters chose to save North Idaho College.”

With the newly elected trustees to take the helm in just two weeks, Hazel said, she hopes they can resolve governance concerns from the NWCCU. She harkened back to 2022 when McKenzie and former trustees Todd Banducci and Mike Waggoner took the majority and held four meetings in the month of December.

“Things can happen quickly,” she said.

The evaluation report released last week said morale on campus showed “tentative” improvement but no one interviewed thought the trajectory of good governance was sustainable. With this election, that changes, Hazel said.

“Inexperience and partisan agendas is what brought NIC to the brink,” she said. “We don’t have that with the new board majority we just elected.”

Emma came to us from The Spokesman Review. She graduated from Washington State University with a B.A. in journalism and heads up our North Idaho Bureau.