Trustees of St. Paul’s College, stripped of its accreditation earlier this summer by the Southern Association of Colleges and School (SACS), voted Thursday to reopen the institution next month and offer a full 2012-2013 school year of classes and programs as it works to resolve SACS’ issues with the college.
The decision by the small, rural central Virginia college, boosted by a district federal court ruling Wednesday temporarily halting the effect of the SACS decision, came as officials at St. Paul’s insisted they want no fight with SACS, only an opportunity to demonstrate the institution has complied with the litany of SACS concerns that led the accrediting body to place St. Paul’s on probation two years ago.
“We will have class on campus this fall and next spring,” said an enthusiastic Dr. Claud Flythe, interim president and chief executive officer of St. Paul’s, a college founded in the 1800s by the Episcopal Church.
“We’ve been inundated with calls,” he said, referring to the initial response to news of the trustees’ decision. “The phone’s been ringing all day,” Flythe said in a telephone interview late Thursday.
Flythe said school officials plan to meet again today to devise a school calendar that will reflect a later than usual start of the school year and still comply with various attendance goals and accommodate holiday breaks during the school year.
In a practical sense, the two-page court decree Wednesday by Judge Charles A. Pannell Jr. of the United States Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, means St. Paul’s remains accredited, although still on probation with SACS. The decree means St. Paul’s “is and remains eligible to participate” in receiving federal and state education funds, a source of income essential to tuition driven institutions.
The injunction against enforcement of the SACS decision governs the relationship between the accrediting agency and the college until the court can hear St. Paul’s arguments for permanent relief or the agency and institution settle their differences, whichever comes first. The court did not set a date for hearing the merits of St. Paul’s complaint.
