Reporting on prep coaching hires

Most school districts I have worked with are legally required to dot their I's and cross their T's before they can say anything. So, unless you have a really good source who is willing to talk, you're not going to get much from that end.

And, yeah, a lot of candidates don't want to talk because of fear of alienating a possible future employer. So it's not really much different than covering a college coaching search. Except you can get the feeling of "how many people deeply care about this in the first place?"

 

No one is hired until the Board votes on it in closed session.

 

Just today, school district PR hack leads two nominally competing papers where they wouldn't have gotten on their own by e-mailing them some announcement I got on new head football coach. He is a former news-sider for us and a current or former stringer for the smaller of the two 'competitors.'

Sigh.

 

In most states, yes. In New Mexico, though, the board only votes on the superintendent's contract and the superintendent finalizes all other hirings. It's been like that in NM for the past 10 years.

 

You mean open session, right?

Votes can NOT be taken in closed or executive session. It violates Open Meetings law.

 

This guys has to be approved by the BOE, which means prior to approval the coach in question or vacant position has to be on the BOE agenda.
And, in many cases the BOE acts on the recommendation of the superintendent or principal.
The BOE agenda may be specific and state "recommendation of Joe Blow to be Hillbilly High's new football coach."
Or it could be general: "Consideration and possible action on Hillbilly High football coaching vacancy."
At any rate, a recommendation has probably been made. You can ask the super, principal or AD who they recommended.

Also, here anyway, applicants are public record and subject to FOIA requests. Want to know who applied - file a FOIA request.

 

Paper near me has started listing everyone who applies for high school head coaching jobs because the public school system has to provide the information. Seems too much to me, so we've never even looked into the law.

 

So that begs the question...... how much do you publish and when prior to the official announcement?

 

It does not beg the question.

http://begthequestion.info/

 

I broke a story a couple of months ago about a coach leaving one of the schools in our area to take a gig elsewhere. We got a tip from someone who said he had heard, so I called the coach in question and, predictably, got no response.

But I got lucky because I knew another coach in the area that had been in the running for the same job and, thankfully, was a talkative guy. Called him up and he said he had been offered the job, but turned it down, and the principal told him they were going to hire the other guy. His OTR info, combined with the chairman of the school board saying he knew the coach leaving had an offer from said school, was enough for us to run.

Woke up the next morning to a press release from the school district announcing the resignation of said coach, and that he was taking the job we had reported. Like I said, I was just lucky to have a source who was also in the running for that job and knew the deal, but like was mentioned above, it really is a pain in the ass depending on the district and the parents/alumni/psychopaths involved.

 

The last "coach leaving" story I did actually was the result of a cooperative coach. It was the guy who preceded Mr. Booster Club.
The coach from the local small D-I college was speaking to a civic group about a week before signing day and I was tasked to cover it. We're on very good terms, so afterward I asked him, for informational purposes only, if there was anybody in our area he was recruiting. He said yes, the quarterback of one of the local schools.
QB's dad was his coach, so I texted him to make sure his kid had committed and maybe pick up a throwaway quote.
He texts back a confirmation, along with a cryptic, "So I guess you've heard the news, huh?"
Turns out the coach had turned in his resignation that day to take another job. Not sure when he'd have told me otherwise, but I stumbled into it by going the extra mile. That felt pretty good.