Board Reviews New Policy

Governing Athletic Coaches

By Larissa Lytwyn

The Board of Education reviewed a new state-mandated policy requiring athletic coaches to undergo annual evaluations by their “immediate supervisor” at its January 18 meeting.

Public Act 4-243, “An Act Concerning Termination of Coaches,”also stipulates that an athletic coach who has served for three or more consecutive years has the right to automatic contract renewal unless he or she is notified within 90 days of the end of the season that employment will not be renewed.

The change in policy, explained Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff, stemmed from a recent case in Region 10, the Burlington and Harwinton districts.

After her contract was abruptly made nonrenewable after a number of years of service, a Region 10 athletic coach “rallied” for support among town officials and later the state legislature to reinstate her to the position.

The case brought to light the fact that there was no state standardized policy on the termination of coaches.

The new required written documentation can now help a coach contest a dismissal he or she may think was unwarranted. 

The act mandates that “local and regional boards of education that employ athletic coaches shall require the coaches’ immediate supervisor to evaluate such coaches on an annual basis and to provide such coaches with copies of such evaluations.”

Under Connecticut Statutes 10-145d-423, a coach must have a coaching permit as issued by the State Department of Education. A certified teacher or administrator is eligible for a coaching permit if he or she has completed a course on first aid within the preceding three years and has CPR certification.

Persons who do not have teacher or administrator certification may still be employed as an athletic coach provided that they are a high school graduate at least 18 years of age and have taken at least three semester hours or at least 45 hours of instruction on the educational, legal, medical, and safety aspects of coaching. To retain a coaching permit, a coach must participate in at least 15 hours of approved training every five years.

If a coach has been employed in the same coaching assignment for at least three years, he or she must be notified by the district’s superintendent that he or she will not be reappointed within 90 days of the end of the applicable athletic season. If that happens, such coaches now have the right to appeal that decision to the Board of Education in accordance with such procedures that the board is obligated to establish.

The state recently released a prototypical policy, Athletic Coaches 4-106.1, to each district’s board of education for implementation.

Under 4-106.1, athletic coaches are defined as those who have direct responsibility for one or more teams (including assistant coaches who serve as coach to, for example, a Junior Varsity team).

The term excludes, however, other assistant coaches (such as the assistant to a JV coach) and volunteer coaches.

There is no detail as to whether these assistant coaches would be covered under the new policy.

In a memorandum to the state Board of Education, the Education Practice Group of Shipman & Goodwin LLP, the firm handling the logistics of the new policy, said that the model policy offers district board of education “maximum flexibility in making coaching decisions.”

“If and when the courts interpret the requirements of PA 04-243, we [would] want to review this model policy, we think that boards of education will benefit from addressing this issue [themselves] now,” the memo stated.

The Education Practice Group continued, “Given the fact that the termination of a coach can be a controversial issue, we are advising superintendents and school boards in Connecticut to adopt a policy to address these new requirements now, so that they will not be required to prescribe an appeal procedure while in the middle of a specific controversy.”

 By addressing these new requirements soon and “proactively,” reasoned the Education Practice Group, “boards of education will be ready to deal with related problems as they arise.”

The new policy will be discussed further, and possibly approved, at the next Newtown school board meeting on Tuesday, February 1, at 7:30 pm, in Room 122 of Reed Intermediate School.

For more information on the new policy, or any other issue, contact the Board of Education office at 426-7621.