Non-renewals by BOE and sports success; correlation? Causation?
Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 5:08 pm
Lazy Friday for me, so I decided to scroll through the basketball and football forums. A common theme I've noticed not just on this board, but other sports forums over the years, is how school boards (or in some cases, the administration of a school) often make the decision to place 'non-renewal' on sports coaches' contracts for the next school year; many times these decisions seem to make "no sense." No sense in that often times, a moderately successful coach can find his contract not renewed for the next school year or a district repeatedly finding itself going through multiple basketball coaches in the span of a couple years because of repeated non-renewals.
I, most likely, have some 'blind spots' to this topic as I'm not as familiar with the hiring of school employees in the public sector as I am when it comes to privates. However, some times I will read about how a district's BOE (or the administration) chose not to renew a coach. I understand some times you're going to have coaches that aren't a good 'fit', or coaches that have good reason to not be brought back the next school year. But I'm led to believe that only a small percentage of coaches who aren't renewed actually fit in that category, with many others being good coaches with good character finding themselves out of a job for apparently no reason. Conjecture, but my observation is sometimes we see the same school districts having a hard time holding onto a coach for one reason or another but often times non-renewals in the past or present have shaped that predicament for the school.
Do non-renewals of coaches, for seemingly no 'good' reason, end up hurting certain districts? It's tough to build a winner when a school is going through coaches like toilet paper. What are peoples thoughts? Could it be the case that BOE's in some places and their decisions act more in the detriment, rather than the benefit, of their schools' athletic success and against the interests of their student-athletes?
I, most likely, have some 'blind spots' to this topic as I'm not as familiar with the hiring of school employees in the public sector as I am when it comes to privates. However, some times I will read about how a district's BOE (or the administration) chose not to renew a coach. I understand some times you're going to have coaches that aren't a good 'fit', or coaches that have good reason to not be brought back the next school year. But I'm led to believe that only a small percentage of coaches who aren't renewed actually fit in that category, with many others being good coaches with good character finding themselves out of a job for apparently no reason. Conjecture, but my observation is sometimes we see the same school districts having a hard time holding onto a coach for one reason or another but often times non-renewals in the past or present have shaped that predicament for the school.
Do non-renewals of coaches, for seemingly no 'good' reason, end up hurting certain districts? It's tough to build a winner when a school is going through coaches like toilet paper. What are peoples thoughts? Could it be the case that BOE's in some places and their decisions act more in the detriment, rather than the benefit, of their schools' athletic success and against the interests of their student-athletes?