Lakeland continues dual credit through NIC, NNU

The Lakeland Joint School District will offer dual credit courses through North Idaho College for the 2023-24 school year.

“They did maintain their accreditation and we are using NIC for dual credit this year,” Superintendent Lisa Arnold said.

The Lakeland board of trustees approved an agreement last week outlining terms for the school year.

The district also offers dual credit courses through Northwest Nazarene University, which does not require instructors to have a master’s degree, Arnold said. Many of the dual credit courses at Timberlake High School are through NNU. NIC does require master's degrees for dual credit courses, which are common at Lakeland High School, Arnold said.

“We just stuck with what we’ve been doing,” Arnold said. “We were waiting to see what happened with the accreditation, which they maintained.”

NIC's accreditation has been operating under a show cause sanction, the last step before a college loses accreditation, since earlier this year. NIC's accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, announced in July that it was extending the show cause sanction to give the college time to return to good standing.

Eligible dual credit instructors in the Lakeland district also applied for course approval through the University of Idaho. Many instructors are approved to teach courses through U of I, if NIC’s accreditation status changes.

“There’s been a time when we had a teacher teaching a course through U of I, but right now at Lakeland high school the vast majority of the courses are through NIC,” Arnold said.