Don’t let political agenda take over the College of Western Idaho board of trustees

By most accounts, the College of Western Idaho has been a raging success.

Its $139 per credit cost is low and affordable for most students. The college’s $11 property tax levy rate is the lowest among all of Idaho’s community colleges. Started from nothing just 15 years ago, the school now boasts an enrollment of 24,000 students.

The board just hired as president Gordon Jones, who was founding dean of Boise State University’s College of Innovation + Design and was the managing director for the Harvard Innovation Lab at Harvard University.

As part of its $15 billion expansion in Boise, Micron announced a partnership with College of Western Idaho to prepare students for the Micron Technician Apprenticeship Program.

The College of Western Idaho is on a roll.

The last thing College of Western Idaho needs is a slate of politically motivated board members who seek to meddle in the day-to-day operations of the college and go on a scavenger hunt to root out what they perceive as indoctrination.

Four out of five seats are up for election this year for the College of Western Idaho board of trustees.

The results could have significant and long-lasting effects on the Treasure Valley-based community college.

One need look no further than the negative impact of the recent elections at North Idaho College to see how important these elections are.

A politically motivated majority on the North Idaho College board fired its college president without cause, leading to a staff exodus. The college’s accreditation agency found the college to be out of compliance with requirements for board governance and institutional integrity. The college was put on probation, with the possibility of losing its accreditation.

Three board members resigned, leading the State Board of Education to appoint three members to clean up the mess, which continues today. That board has its own contentious election on Nov. 8.

We don’t want to see the same sort of mess down here in the Treasure Valley.

The community college board is supposed to be nonpartisan, but four candidates – Alisha Hickman, Thad Butterworth, Ryan Spoon and Jan Zarr – are running as a Republican ticket.

They’re running against three incumbents – Molly Lenty, Jim Reames and Annie Hightower. Nicole Bradshaw is running for an open seat in Zone 1 against Hickman.

Gordon Simpson is a third candidate running in Zone 2 against Lenty and Spoon.

The four Republican candidates are pledging to cut spending, reduce property taxes and stamp out what two candidates call “agenda-based curricula,” according to Idaho Education News.

Spoon served on Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s useless education task force trying to root out critical race theory in public education. Hickman said she’d “cut the needless woke agenda.”

Spoon and Hickman are critical of what they called CWI’s support for Boise Pride. CWI said a student club attended the event and no tax dollars were spent, according to Idaho Education News, showing that once again, the right wing is tilting at windmills. It brings into question whether the candidates, if elected, would shut down students’ free speech rights.

All four signed the Idaho Republican Party purity pledge, vowing to support the party platform, which includes opposing “any social justice indoctrination” and prohibiting “universities, colleges or public schools from incorporating social justice indoctrination theories (i.e. critical race theory, transformative social emotional learning, diversity, equity and inclusion, replacement theory, queer theory, etc.) into their policies, curriculum and/or course materials.”

Such meddling in the day-to-day operations of the college, efforts to root out non-existent critical race theory and stymieing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts would only serve to disrupt the success at College of Western Idaho.

We’ve seen this movie before, and so far it doesn’t have a happy ending in North Idaho College.

The last thing we need is a sequel at the College of Western Idaho.

This story was originally published November 3, 2022 at 4:00 AM.