YAKIMA, Wash. – The American Federation of Teachers and Yakima Valley College students attended a meeting of the YVC board of trustees to voice their frustrations over the college’s administration.
“Today we’re out here for a union action,” said Rachel Dorn, faculty union president.
She told me the union has lost all confidence in college’s president Dr. Linda Kaminski.
“We’ve brought a lot issues of concern to the board,”says Dorn. “To the board of trustees, to the administration. We’re not seeing any progress.”
I reached out to the YVC for a comment. YVC sent me this statement saying:
We appreciate the work and leadership of President Kaminski. As trustees, our focus is on making sure that Yakima Valley College is fulfilling its mission to serve our students and to strengthen the entire Yakima Valley.
I, as board chair, along with the incoming chair, recently met with faculty leaders at their request. The college is providing detailed information to answer the three questions they asked related to college policies and procedures.
Our focus will remain on advancing YVC’s mission.
“We’ve had a lot of meetings where we got to talk to the board of trustees and there’s no answers,” said Dorn. “The answers we’ve gotten from Dr. Kaminski, from the administration have tended to be either contradictory.”
The union has expressed concern over the situation with YVC’s teacher education program. The school won’t be accepting students for the 2023-24 school year so it can have a planning year.
Dustin Wunderlich, manager of community relations says the program is not cancelled. He sent me a statement regarding the Bachelor’s Applied Science Teachers Education program. The statement says:
The Bachelor of Applied Science in Teacher Education program is currently engaged in new opportunities that will continue to reflect teaching and learning best practices, along with excellent student supports. To ensure continuity for our students, we are postponing the Fall cohort of students and will accept applications beginning in February 2024 for our next Bachelor of Applied Science in Teacher Education cohort that will start classes in Fall 2024.
It is important to note that juniors currently in the college’s program will be continuing on for their second year in our program during the 2023-24 academic year. So, our BAS-TE program will not at any point be closed.
Dorn says the union has done everything it could to avoid the vote of no confidence in Dr. Kaminski.
Dorn says their focus for non-tenured faculty members is to protect them, but she says it’s getting harder.
Dorn tells me when she was at the meeting, she was going to bring up why they needed to hold a vote for no confidence to the board of trustees.
