The Arkansas Educational Television Network Commission briskly voted to approve a compromise with its fundraising arm Tuesday morning, ending months of feuding with the AETN Foundation.
The commission voted unanimously in a teleconference meeting to approve a resolution that restores network CEO Courtney Pledger to the foundation board, which now gets latitude in hiring the foundation’s next chief executive.
The public television network and its foundation shared a CEO before a dispute over a longtime foundation COO’s firing by Pledger caused a schism earlier this year. The foundation board subsequently voted Pledger off the board and out of her role as foundation chairman.
Tuesday’s compromise will restore Pledger as a voting member of the foundation board, along with an AETN Commission representative to the board, but it will not let Pledger return as foundation CEO. Nonprofit governance experts have told Arkansas Business that fundraising foundations generally benefit from having independent leadership from the organizations they support.
A Tuesday news release from AETN described the arrangement as a “new operational structure” to help the network “move forward into a digital future.” Commission Chair Skip Holland noted the “crucial financial backing” the foundation provides.
Tuesday’s meeting lasted just nine minutes.
“We are thrilled at the re-energized relationship with the AETN Foundation,” Pledger told Arkansas Business in a Tuesday email. “With the vital support of the foundation and its members, we see a brilliant future for statewide public media in Arkansas.”
The compromise, which also gives the commission real sway in the selection of the next foundation CEO, does not deal directly with the dismissal of Mona Dixon, the foundation COO who contested her firing as retaliation for her standing up to Pledger on financial matters.
That firing, as well as controversies involving two separate audit reports — one last year and another in 2019 — have drawn headlines and even a mild admonition from the man who appointed Pledger to lead AETN in March 2017, Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The governor told Arkansas Business last month that he expected Pledger to take a lesson from an Arkansas Department of Education audit report that found $400,000 in misused spending.
“I know Director Pledger will follow the guidance given,” the governor said, noting that one of his goals in hiring her was to awaken AETN and haul it into the 21st century.
Under Tuesday’s resolution, Pledger will offer a list of candidates for the job of foundation CEO, and candidates will be judged by a foundation executive committee “comprised of the AETN Foundation Board Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary/Treasurer, the AETN executive director and the AETN Commission Board Representative,” the resolution says.
That board will recommend a foundation CEO candidate, and hiring will be decided by a foundation board vote.
“The AETN Foundation CEO will hire, supervise and terminate foundation staff and run daily operations,” the resolution states. The deal will also expand the foundation board to up to 15 members, with members of the board and commission recommending proposed new members.
The foundation board chair, Lynne Rich of the University of Central Arkansas, said in a statement that she’s pleased with the deal.
“The AETN Foundation is proud of our nearly 35-year history supporting the programming on AETN that Arkansans love and trust,” she said. “We anticipate even greater benefits for our members as we work with the commission, donors and viewers to provide Arkansans engagement opportunities throughout the state.”
Hutchinson introduced Pledger, a former film producer and executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, with fanfare at the State Capitol nearly three years ago.
But friction with staff veterans began almost immediately, and by late 2018 Pledger was facing criticism from Dixon over an arrangement for the independent foundation paying for a contract to a content consultant, Rachel Raney.
After Dixon’s dismissal in February, she promised legal action if no deal could be reached. On March 8, a letter from “concerned employees” of AETN cited the Raney contract as “a clear, documentable example” of Pledger’s “repeated attempts to misuse funding.”
As executive director of both AETN and the nonprofit foundation, Pledger oversaw the $36,000 consulting deal with Raney, a film documentarian and North Carolina public media executive. The dispute essentially centered on whether the consultant should have been paid with foundation funds or state agency funds.
The rift with the foundation board intensified when it voted to reject Pledger as its executive director, and even removed her from the board entirely. The state responded with an ultimatum demanding her restoration. If not, AETN said, it would sever its contract with the foundation, ending the three-decade partnership.
Though the state set a deadline, it passed months ago.
The Education Department’s audit report, first reported last month in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, criticized AETN for spending $409,092 in “non-project-related disbursements and unallowed disbursements” from a $2.8 million state grant in fiscal year 2019, which ended June 30. The grant was for educational internet programming the network provides to Arkansas schools, the Internet Delivered Education for Arkansas Schools, or IDEAS.
Pledger told the Democrat-Gazette that network officials “believe that we have operated the Arkansas IDEAS program in the best interest of all educators” and that they “were following previous guidance.”
She told Arkansas Business at the time that she and her team were boning up on Arkansas Department of Education requirements.
“Staff and leadership have been working through the ADE procedures and policies line by line to create crystal clear rules moving forward, to serve our children and educators,” she said. “AETN is developing more checks and balances systems to prevent any future errors.”
The director, whose supporters say she was targeted by disappointed staffers undermining her leadership, has drawn praise for AETN innovations like widespread streaming coverage of legislative hearings and broadcasts of the state high school football and basketball championships. Even her critics have praised a renewed focus on local and regional programming.
As for the “guidance” the governor expects Pledger to follow, the Education Department monitors laid out several recommended actions, including AETN’s either refunding the misspent $409,092 or accepting a reduction of the same amount from next year’s grant. The department also labeled AETN a “high risk entity,” meaning compliance will be monitored by the department’s coordination office.
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