May meet in person, restore call to the public and end ban on members speaking to the press

The Yavapai College District Governing Board voted during its March 4 policy workshop to add language into Policy 308, which involved planning board meetings and agenda creation, stating that meetings would preferably be held in person and have open calls to the public in every agenda.

The 4-0 vote, with Board Chairwoman and District 2 representative Deb McCasland abstaining, also included a more streamlined process for getting action items onto the agenda.

“The spirit is, it’s still a two-step process,” District 5 representative Steve Bracety said.

The first step is for the board to vote on whether something is board business. The second step is the board voting on whether members want to take action.

“However, we’re going to have on all our board agenda items something called ‘future board agenda topics,’ which satisfies the first step,” he said. “Then it’s discussed at the next meeting. So instead, in theory, taking 60 days to decide, it takes 30.”

Bracety said he still wants legal guidance on Higher Learning Commission guidelines.

Until then, he said, “the president does have the ability to pull an item if he or she feels it’s operational as opposed to board policy.”

Code of Ethics

The board also voted to strike ethics policy sections that forbade board members from talking to the press in a way that could reflect negatively to the college.

It voted to keep sections to prevent speaking directly with college employees.

After being elected, but “before I was installed, I had numerous calls saying ‘Deb you got to know this,’ from staff, faculty, everybody,” McCasland said. “So, I waited until we did a monitoring with the president, and I was told I was totally out of line, because … the proper way for me to bring a problem up is when it is happening, contact the president and let her know that you think there is a problem.”

District 1 representative Bill Kiel said there’s no reason to believe board members would find out if there was a problem at the college if they weren’t allowed to talk to faculty.

“You said,” Kiel said to college President Lisa Rhine, “if they talk to board members regarding board business they are subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.”

“They shouldn’t talk about board business with a board member,” Rhine said. “Why would they be talking about board business with a board member?”

“Because they have every right to do that,” Kiel said.

Rhine said staff and faculty can talk to board members, but board members should bring anything to discuss because of something they heard from a staff member.

Bracety said there’s already a process — college council — to work through any college employee grievances.

“Our emails are on the YC website,” Bracety said. “People have no problem getting a hold of us, as we all know, and we can address it with Dr. Rhine.”

Kiel said he’s heard many times people would like to speak out about the college but fear retribution, a lot of employees’ unique roles, positions or situations would out them in an anonymous report.

“I just want us to be able to be more transparent with faculty and staff,” Kiel said. “The way it is now, we are not and we miss out on a lot of opportunities to make suggestions, which Dr. Rhine could accept or reject, but at least we could be informed more completely about the college.”

Rhine claimed there was no evidence suggesting people fear retaliation if they speak out about something, citing engagement surveys, which she said 85% of employees respond.