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Opinion: Education

Idaho Ed Board Risks Legal Action and National Censure

By Nick Gier, Unfiltered 12-31-09

I would like to respond to a column in the Idaho Press Tribune (Dec. 21) written by Paul Agidius, who, as president of the State Board of Education, defends proposed changes to its personnel policies.

If you look at the proposals, you will find that powers given to the campus presidents are not new; rather, they have been lifted out of the financial exigency sections, but without the due process protections for employees that exist there. As a result employee rights are severely compromised.

The faculty senate at Lewis-Clark State College has taken the lead in resisting any changes in personnel policy. Here is the essence of their full statement before the Board’s December 10 meeting: “the Board is engaging in unfair, unaccountable, and unconscionable practices that are contrary to public policy and sound employment principles and violate basic tenets of contract law.”

Latah County (and perhaps many more throughout the state) has declared a financial emergency, but the Board has insisted that it cannot do this because it would destroy Idaho’s credit rating.

Some of us are thinking of other possible reasons:

·Campuses still have reserves, and one cannot blame administrators for putting aside the funds;

·The UI agriculture dean was thwarted in closing the Parma station because he would have go to a board heavily lobbied by growers and legislators; or

·The Lois Pace case (1981-86), a $1 million settlement financed by the faculty union, stands as an intimidating legal precedent for botched financial emergencies.

The financial exigency policies have been vetted by my national office as well as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and the procedures are strong because Elizabeth Zinser refused to assume the UI presidency in 1989 unless they met the highest academic and legal standards. The UI was removed from the AAUP’s national censure list and Zinser became the UI’s 14th president.

Agidius appears to have a rather cavalier attitude towards academic tenure, a property right that can be removed only in the case of professional incompetence, a felony conviction, moral turpitude, program reduction, or financial exigency.

In its new language the Board properly excludes tenured faculty from “reduction in force,” but another proposed change states that their contracts can be altered. Agidius is simply wrong in assuring us that this is “no different than the process that currently exists.”

Our national office has provided us two legal precedents in Montana and Florida that indicate that tenure protects base salary. The union is prepared to use these cases to protect Idaho’s tenured faculty.

The Board has also proposed a major change to its financial exigency policy, removing due process for employees who may be reassigned anywhere in Idaho. At the December 1st UI faculty senate meeting, Dean John Hammel stated that, without Board language that would allow it, he could move the Parma faculty to any station he chose.

By approving the proposed changes to its personnel and exigency policies, the Board is risking not only court action on behalf of faculty and staff, but also an investigation by the AAUP and the possibility of placing the entire college and university system on its national black list.

I beg the Board to reconsider these unwise and arguably illegal moves.

Nick Gier is President of the Higher Education Council of the Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO. He taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.

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