Nebraska's community colleges reached an agreement on Tuesday to resolve a long-simmering dispute over governance and the allocation of state funds, a state senator who helped mediate the dispute announced.
The dispute reached a high point of acrimony last year after one of the colleges was kicked out of the association that manages the institutions, and it in turn sued the other five.
The college that filed the lawsuit, Metropolitan Community College, in Omaha, contended that $11-million in state funds it should have received went to the other colleges instead.
It agreed to drop that litigation, and all of the colleges agreed to work together on a new formula for dividing up state funds and a new structure for their oversight body, the Nebraska Community College Association, said State Sen. Greg Adams. He announced the agreement at a news conference, the McCook Daily Gazette, a Nebraska newspaper, reported.
Under the agreement, which requires approval of the colleges' governing boards, Metropolitan will receive a total of $1.8-million from the other colleges for the coming academic year, and a new formula will be put in place after June 30, 2011.
The college association will also expire at that time and be replaced or reconstituted. The association is now composed of two representatives from each college's governing board.
In a report last December, Nebraska's Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education characterized that structure as one that "tends to reinforce institutional, rather than statewide, interests," and recommended that the legislature replace the association with a statewide council.
Comments
1. willynilly - March 10, 2010 at 11:29 am
Well FINALLY, Metropolitan has succeded at geting itself at the front door of reversing the age old Robin Hood Principle. The only way this new distribution formula will work, as far as Metropolitan is concerned, is that it must take from the poor and give to the rich.