(1) ACCT Annual Meetings

8 of 9 ACC trustees attended the 1993 meeting and heard Carver's keynote speech.
Several trustees attended policy-governance workshops at the 1994 meeting.

(2) January 1995 -- meeting with policy-governance consultant

Five trustees and the College President went through about 8 hours of work sessions with a consultant to make a draft set of policies based on Carver's book. These were widely circulated to the College leadership, but were not immediately acted on due to concerns expressed by various people.

The primary concerns expressed were from: [1] trustees who were skeptical that the Board could adequately ensure the effectiveness of the College and the safety of its assets with such vague policy statements, and [2] the faculty, who felt that they might lose protections in several areas and that they should have more chance to participate in such a fundamental change.

(3) March 1995 -- roadmap of existing policies

A trustee (one of the 3 initial policy-governance enthusiasts) took the existing policy manual (154 policies in 320+ poorly-organized pages) and produced a comprehensive summary in which almost all substantive provisions were outlined. This both gave people some idea of what the existing policy provisions were (and were not) and underlined the non-strategic nature of most of the material.

(4) April/May 1995 -- trial Carver-style policies and practices

The Board adopted, on a trial basis, a policy on principles for the College budget which closely followed the draft policy developed at the work session with the consultant. It mandated a balanced budget based on a master plan and divided among campuses on objective criteria such as enrollment and program needs. Authority was delegated to the President to make budget transfers as needed in pursuit of these principles. While the board subsequently adopted a variant of this trial policy on a permanent basis, neither were seen as successful in causing compliance during the first two budgets to which they applied.

A new values-based policy which was more immediately successful was one which established a principle (matching the in-district tax effort per credit-hour) on which the out-of-district tuition surcharge could be automatically set. This has removed a perennial intense argument from the Board agenda.

Another area of new policy was a drastic reduction (from 9 pages to 1 page) in the Board's bylaws. This restructuring was also used to adopt Carver-style provisions about the leadership role of the Board Chair. The Board also abandoned separate committees at about this time, going instead to a monthly committee-of-the-whole format for discussions. These changes have proved popular with both the Board and the administration, and are now firmly established.

Work also began on a policy about principles for assessment, placement, and mandatory remediation (flexibility, efficiency, & relevance). While it eventually won unanimous Board support, this policy was controversial and a final version was not adopted until January 1996.

(5) Fall/Winter 1995 -- development of the "policy-consolidation" approach

In order to create a path to a policy-governance system even while a majority of the Board did not feel that the College was ready to abruptly abandon its existing policies, the Trustees who felt that this approach had promise developed an eight-step process in which each step was designed to attract wide support, even from skeptics about the full Carver approach.

At each point during the consolidation process, proposals were circulated for several months to the administration and faculty. By the time of Board action, little controversy remained and almost all were adopted unanimously, with support from the administration and faculty as well.

The eight "policy-consolidation" steps were:

[i] division of the existing policies into four groups: (published fall 1995)

[a] Group A -- 83 policies with no strategic content

[b] Group B -- 54 "easy" policies where the strategic content can be easily separated

[c] Group C -- 23 "difficult" policies with sensitive content

[d] Group D -- 16 existing policies already fully at the strategic level

[ii] development of a policy on Board Policy Principles codifying several policy-governance principles and specifically authorizing the President to establish administrative rules subordinate to Board policy without needing Board action. (adopted February 1996)

[iii] development of a "top-level" General Executive Directives and Limitations policy based on the work with the consultant. (adopted April 1996)

[iv] repeal of all 83 Group A policies (180 pages), transferring them to Presidential authority as administrative rules. (April 1996)

[v] adoption of a policy on Monitoring Policy Compliance designating the Board Vice-Chair as the coordinator of Board-level activities to assess compliance with policy. (July 1996)

[vi] adoption of 7 "consolidated" policies (total 5 pages) to replace the 54 Group B policies. (August/September 1996 proposals and conclusion )

[vii] adoption of 7 more consolidated policies (total 5 pages), including some substantive additions on topics such as due process, to replace 23 Group C policies. (March-May 1997)

[viii] adoption of an annual Board calendar which schedules Board activities on policy review, environmental scanning, results evaluation, Board self-evaluation, strategic-planning review, and networking with the community. (June 1997) (current version)

(6) Publishing of new policy book (August 1997). (current version)

When the policy-consolidation process was complete, the 46 Board policies (averaging 210 words each in length) were renumbered into a coherent ordering, published in a compact form (six 8 1/2-by-11 sheets printed on both sides), and distributed to all faculty and staff.

(7) Further plans for the 1997-98 academic year.

The Board calendar calls for the Board to decide on a policy review plan for the year at its November meeting. In addition to development of ends policies and a few new operations-related policies, the Board and President plan to use this year to further replace implementational provisions in Board policy with ones stating the values the Board wishes to have respected and the external results it wishes to have produced.

Last updated June 7, 1998. Comments, suggestions?