Having been expelled from Kayenta High School facilities by Kayenta Unified School District officials to accommodate an alternative high school program, Northland Pioneer College is left to find a new home so community college offerings can continue to be provided in the remote northeastern Arizona community.
For now, NPC’s Kayenta classes are being held in a vacant primary school, which NPC President Dr. Jeanne Swarthout characterizes as “not ideal, but available.”
The Navajo County Community College District Governing Board gave approval this week for Swarthout and her staff to explore the cost-benefits of three possible solutions to the Kayenta dilemma by answering three questions: What would it cost to renovate the primary school to provide suitable class accommodations, should the school district give permission to do so? What are options for other locations within the township? What is the potential for long-term use of county facilities in Kayenta?
While the Kayenta School District has given NPC permission to temporarily use the unoccupied primary school, it has severely limited the amount of modifications it would allow NPC to undertake to make the facility more amenable to student and faculty needs, and more conducive to effective learning.
While the primary school is safe for college use (NPC paid for a mold inspection to address concerns about potential mold contamination; none was found), NPC administrators have concerns about classroom sizes, configurations and acoustic considerations related to audio-visual classes.
Vice President of Administrative Services Blaine Hatch said the school district won’t allow modifications needed to make class and office settings ideal, although the college can make nonstructural modifications to make the structure temporarily workable.
Hatch commented that the rent for the primary school is “pretty high” compared to the college’s leases in other communities. He said, “I think we could justify doing our own facility that would be more appropriate to our needs.
“I think there would be a five- to six-year return on our investment, as compared to the high costs of a long-term lease,” said Hatch.
The board gave Swarthout approval to develop cost-benefits analyses for the three scenarios she outlined, but before closing out the discussion, Board Secretary Ginny Handorf said, “It seems to me it would be obvious the students and families of those students value our presence in the community. I’m kind of surprised the school district, the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) and tribe don’t want to help.
“It makes me feel there’s almost a negative feeling toward our presence and it kind of disturbs me. Now we’re in a situation where we can’t even make appropriate changes. I find the whole thing frustrating,” said Handorf.
Swarthout replied, “My discussions with the township have been very positive. The school district needed an alternative high school. I feel very positive about the conversations I’ve had with the township.”
After closing out the Kayenta discussion, the board discussed the Painted Desert Campus in Holbrook, including the development of a 20,000-square-foot skills center that Swarthout said would be built to accommodate the college’s welding program, as well as future programs in the construction trades to be offered through NPC.
Swarthout reminded the board that NPC agreed to vacate its former campus on Hermosa Drive in Holbrook by 2016, which would include relocating the welding center currently located there. She said she’d like to begin the relocation process early by constructing a skill center for welding at the college’s Painted Desert Campus, and also to provide new career and technical programs. Swarthout expressed her desire to begin the architectural and building processes toward the end of the fiscal year, and requested permission to begin preparation of architectural processes so she could present cost information for the project to the board.
“I don’t want to run up against the 2016 deadline. I want to get moving,” said Swarthout.
Board member Dusty Parsons said, “I’d like to get a little more definition of what future programs will be. I’d like to see a feasibility study for the project before you stick it over to architects. This isn’t a lot of information to make a very costly decision.”
Swarthout explained that the college would provide architects with very specific project parameters and wouldn’t be looking for project designs at this point, but rather for architects’ assessment of what kind of structure would accommodate NPC’s needs and the estimated costs required to construct the facility.
“I assume we will be looking at the most simple construction needed to accommodate the programs that we want to offer,” said Swarthout.
In other action Dec. 13, the board approved a request for the college to allow student data, such as transfer and student success information, to be provided to the Arizona Department of Education (ADE), with the caveat that the information could not be distributed to any other entity and reports generated from the data would not identify individual students, but would present aggregate information.
“Essentially, it would be so students can be tracked from the cradle to the grave in the system,” said Swarthout.
According to laws regarding privacy of school records, each community college must enter into an individual agreement allowing the information to be shared with ADE.
“Our biggest concern is that the information can’t be released beyond ADE,” said Swarthout.
Swarthout said the data sharing with ADE is a priority of Governor Jan Brewer’s, and that NPC, along with the state’s other colleges, is paying $6 per full-time student to fund the information-sharing endeavor.
The board also approved NPC’s request to provide unarmed security guards on the college’s four campuses to serve as a deterrent to crime and to provide a sense of safety for students. The guards would patrol campuses on foot during evening hours while students are on campus.
The board agreed to fund the security patrols until summer for an amount not to exceed $50,000, with the condition that the security program would be evaluated before entering into a contract for the next school year.
The board also approved the budget and academic calendars, and discussed enrollment trends, which show enrollment essentially flat, with a .7 percent decrease in the number of students enrolled at NPC from fall 2010 to fall 2011.
Finally, the staff presented new employee hires to the board. Akpabio Akpabio, of Titusville, Fla., is a new systems analyst programmer, and will take up his post Jan. 2, 2012. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in computer science from Clark Atlanta University.
Stuart Bishop of Pinetop Lakes has accepted the position of faculty in fire science and program coordinator. Bishop earned an associate of applied science degree in fire science from NPC, an associate’s degree from Mesa Community College in administration of justice, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northern Arizona University in management.
The next regular meeting of the governing board will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 17.
