College witness says she discussed method of calculating 85/15 Rule with VA; VA witness does not recall such conversation
The multimillion dollar lawsuit between the former director of aviation programs at Yavapai College, Dan Hamilton, and the College is headed for a jury trial. If it is not settled, the jury will be asked to decide whether the College took sufficient steps to inform the VA about how they were calculating the 85/15 rule. Hamilton alleges that Yavapai College and its airplane program partner, NorthAire Aviation, violated the Veteran’s Administration funding rule that limits VA beneficiary enrollment to 85% in any program. (In other words, the program must have at least 15% of its enrollees as civilians.)
In his most recent rulings, Federal District Court Judge Murray Snow wrote that there are “competing issues of material fact as to whether the VA explicitly authorized” Yavapai College to use the calculation it did to arrive at an 85/15 ratio. The conflict in testimony is between the College’s Certifying Official, Ms. Aldrich, and the VA representative, Ms. Swafford.
According to the Judge’s memo, Ms. Aldrich testified during her deposition that she personally discussed Yavapai’s method of calculating the 85/15 Rule with VA representative Ms. Swafford. Ms. Aldrich testified that Ms. Swafford told her that it was proper for Yavapai to compute one 85/15 ratio for the entirety of its degree program, and that the 85/15 Rule did not require separate calculations for each concentration within the program.
However, Ms. Swafford testified at her deposition that she does not recall having any such conversation with Ms. Aldrich in December of 2012. Furthermore, Ms. Swafford testified that Yavapai never explicitly asked whether it could comply with the 85/15 Rule if it combined the four concentrations of the AVT program into a single ratio.
A jury will be asked to resolve the conflicting testimony.
You may read all of Judge Snow’s ruling here.620 ORDER on MSJs[5372]