Arcadia’s Best received the following open letter Friday (Aug. 9) from three members of the Arcadia School Board who are the targets of an intended recall election, for which a petition drive is being mounted primarily relating to the decision of the School Board, including the Superintendent, not to renew the District’s optional year-to-year agreement to pay one of their physical education teachers, Jim O’Brien, an extra few thousand dollars per year to coach the cross country team. He has taken the team to National Championships in recent years and he has also ruffled feathers of officials for finding a way to accomplish things his way after the District has turned down some of his requests — setting up his own summer training camp when the Distict told him he could not allow students to run off campus due to being uninsured by the school; spray painting damaged lockers with an X to denote that they could not be secured after officials told him the lockers would not be repaired or replaced; taking female student athletes to Mammoth Lakes for training wthout District approval (he was reprimanded but later won a grievance against the District over the matter). The decision not to renew his annual appointment as coach of the cross country team, which was officially made in June but which had been brewing for some months and for which parents of students have been expressing concerns at school board meetings since earlier this year, culminated in a 15-minute video being produced and viewed by thousands that encouraged the coach’s reinstatement, and a special School Board meeting last month at which about 600 people attended and about 50 people spoke passionately in defense of the coach. Shortly after that meeting, the School Board announced it would take no action as a result of that meeting. Since then, an official filing was made to register an intent to recall three school board members and there has been almost daily front page stories in the Pasadena Star-News this week about the coach noting long-resolved issues of years ago and recent reports to and from the School District and the California Interscholastic Federation regarding reports of possible rules infractions. Jim O’Brien remains employed as a physical education teacher at Arcadia High School — this matter is limited to his former supplemental coaching duties of the cross country team. The recall campaign against the three school board members being targeted requires signatures from 20% of the city’s registered voters, or more than 5,600 voters, to mount a special recall election. With this background for those readers who may not have been familiar with this story, Arcadia’s Best is publishing the following open letter in its entirety and verbatim as received by e-mail on Friday, Aug. 9, 2013:
An Open Letter to the Arcadia Community
Recently, there has been a lot of public discussion about the removal of James O’Brien, the Arcadia High School cross-country coach who has had a number of very successful seasons over the years.
As a matter of policy, the District does not publicly comment on personnel matters. First we are legally precluded from providing details of private personnel issues. Second, we are true believers in allowing people to maintain their privacy in employment matters.
However, the details of many of the issues that have brought us here have been released by the employee himself. Given this reality and the fact that this issue is creating some intense division in some portions of the Arcadia community, we believe it is appropriate to address it and hopefully put the matter to rest.
As a result of a call from a CIF representative and information from some students and parents, it became clear that Mr. O’Brien had created a pattern of rules violations through his coaching practices, which in some cases seemed to completely disregard CIF rules. Unfortunately, the violations and his refusal to take responsibility for those actions undermined the many good things he was doing for our students. What’s more, if we didn’t take corrective action to address the violations, the CIF may have imposed sanctions that could have kept our students from competing.
We were elected to be education leaders and it’s vital that we model integrity and good sportsmanship for our students. We hold our students to the highest standards of honesty; why would we not hold our coaches to that same standard?
The decision to remove Mr. O’Brien as coach was unfortunate and difficult. The championship trophies that line the Arcadia High School trophy cases are evidence that he was able to pull true talent out of our children.
But as representatives of this community, we made the decision to remove him because we do not believe that a “win at any cost” mentality has a place in our school district. Instead, we believe our students deserve to be taught that honesty and integrity are the most important character traits we can instill and winning should be the result of hard work and strong performance – within the rules.
We are fortunate in Arcadia to have some of the most talented, intellectually curious, and focused students in the state, along with a hardworking instructional team that has developed an academic program that optimizes our students’ capabilities. The evidence of this fact is overwhelming. From our unmatched API of 929, a graduation rate of 98.3%, and 93% of our graduates self-identifying as college bound, this community is proud to produce such strong students.
As a Board of Education, it is our responsibility to make these hard decisions. It is unfortunate that this reassignment had to occur. But it is also unfortunate that this one decision has become the focus of a recall effort. Given the success we consistently see in AUSD, it is our hope that the community at large will understand that while employment matters are difficult and we all like to get trophies and win, the priority must be maintaining and enhancing the strong academic program we have here at AUSD.
Sincerely,
Cung Nguyen, Lori Phillipi, and Kay Kinsler
Mr. Nguyen, Mrs. Phillipi and Mrs. Kinsler are members of the Governing Board for Arcadia Unified School District who are the subject of a possible recall effort related to the decision to remove James O’Brien as Cross-Country Coach at Arcadia High School. If the recall qualifies for the ballot as a special election, it is estimated it will cost the District about $300,000.
Not paid for with public funds.