Increase in coaches’ pay could be funded by parents

This article appeared in the 23 April 2008 edition of The Piedmont Post.

Increase in coaches’ pay could be funded by parents

Piedmont Boosters Club recommends $325 participation fee

By Benjamin Bombard

A proposal to significantly increase the salaries of Piedmont’s athletic coaches would do so by instituting participation fees similar to those charged by club sports, potentially reforming the financial landscape of Piedmont High Athletics.

Authored by a subcommittee of the Piedmont High School Athletic Boosters Club and presented at a public meeting held on Tuesday, April 22, the proposal would reform the financial landscape of Piedmont High athletics.

If approved by the school board in May, the proposal would pay all coaches the same weekly salary, create an athletic trainer position, provide compensation to a limited number of assistant coaches, and allow head coaches to enroll their children in Piedmont schools.

The stipend level would balloon the current district stipend spending budget from $63,339 to $313,517. In order to fund the estimated $250,000 gap, the School District has agreed to increase their contribution by $50,000, and the Boosters Club is recommending the school require a $325 participation fee per athlete per sport. According to the Boosters Club, team fundraising through car washes, raffles and other special events accounts for 55-percent of athletic funding, and that number will remain unchanged.

Free ride

Piedmont currently uses a five-tiered pay schedule to determine coaching salaries. That plan values some coaches and sports more highly than others. As of 2007, the pay received by varsity head coaches ranged from $1,139 for the cheerleading coach to $2,103 for the varsity basketball and baseball coaches. The school district has not given coaches a raise since a 3-percent stipend increase in 1995.

“We’ve essentially gotten a free ride on the backs of our coaches,” says Mark Menke, the president of the Booster’s Club.

The proposed changes would bring coaching stipends up to a highly competitive level with comparable public, parochial and private schools.

The new stipends would range from $1,869 for a first year girls’ golf coach to $5,885 for a fifth year varsity football coach. Compensation would be tied to the length, in weeks, of the sport’s schedule, not including North Coast Section Playoffs, as well as to a coach’s years of experience at Piedmont. To avoid a similar situation in the future, the new pay scale would be reviewed annually to insure it is consistent with district-wide increases.

The new proposal was drafted in response to the findings of the coaching stipend review committee, formed in February 2007 to address Piedmont High’s difficulty recruiting and retaining coaches.

In 2006-2007, 75-percent of students participated in at least one high school sport, not including multi-sport athletes. Yet since the 1999-2000 school year, 135 coaches have coached 46 different sports. The problem is most apparent in junior varsity softball, which has had a different coach every year for the last decade.

According to a report authored by the coaching stipend review committee, the hope is that by raising coaching salaries, Piedmont will be more competitive when recruiting and retaining quality coaches. They say that would create a better experience for athletes, who can spend less time adjusting to new coaches, and more time developing their skills and having fun.

More consistent coaching also means fewer administrative headaches.

“Almost every single year I lost a new coach,” said Karyn Shipp, Piedmont’s assistant vice principal and a former girls’ varsity soccer coach and women’s athletic director. “If [coaches] were selected by Piedmont and another school, we lost them, always because of stipends.”

To Menke and his wife Anne-Marie Lamarche – both of whom served on the review committee – providing coaches with better compensation is an issue of “basic fairness,” and they believe there is competitive precedent for participation fees in club sports and other levels of competition. Their presentation last Tuesday showed that competitive club sports typically charge participation fees in excess of $300. Bay Area schools Monte Vista High and San Ramon Valley High charge participation fees as well.

Menke and Lamarche also provided accounts of what they call a “weird side-effect” of paltry coaching salaries that could potentially cost Piedmont its standing in the Bay Shore Athletic League.

“Many teams collect money at the end of the year to pay coaches under the table. That’s not equitable, and the school has no real knowledge or oversight of those practices,” said Lamarche.

“Anecdotally, we know this goes on. We’d like to pay the stipend upfront,” added Menke.

It is a violation of California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) rules for a coach to be reimbursed from any source other than school finds without the approval of the school’s governing board, and gifts to coaches in excess of $500 must be reported to the CIF.

Other provisions

In addition to providing increased salaries for head coaches, the committee also recommends that assistant coaches be salaried at the rate of one assistant coach per 10 athletes on a given roster. They will receive a pay increase similar to that of head coaches. Menke and Lamarche say it’s not uncommon for a head coach to distribute his salary amongst his assistant coaches to help retain their services and acknowledge their contribution to a team.

The proposal would create a year-round, part-time position for an athletic trainer and strength and conditioning coach to help athletes avoid injury, improve athletic performance and reduce the school district’s liability.

Another incentive for recruiting and retaining coaches is a proposal to allow the children of head coaches to enroll in Piedmont schools, an opportunity already extended to other Piedmont School District employees.

“On paper, that’s a huge incentive,” said PHS Principal Randy Booker. “It’s probably a bigger benefit than the stipend alone. People work hard to send their children to Piedmont schools.”

Community input

As one might expect, Piedmont coaches are enthusiastic about the possibility of receiving a larger stipend.

“Teachers and coaches make a great impression on young people's lives,” said varsity girl’s lacrosse coach LaNon Gillins. “Coaching and teaching build the future of these kids, and the pay does not reflect the effect coaches or teachers have on a young person's life.”

The Post recently conducted an informal poll of Piedmont coaches, and six of the nine polled said that they would be more likely to continue coaching at PHS if they were offered a larger stipend. Eight stated that Piedmont coaches are not adequately or fairly compensated.

“Obviously, though, we don’t do it for the money,” said varsity tennis coach Neil Rothenberg, echoing the sentiments of many coaches. “It isn’t even the sport, necessarily. It's about the kids.”

All of the coaches polled said they had received coaching offers from other schools offering higher stipends, and all but one agreed that they would be more likely to coach at Piedmont if their children were allowed to attend the town’s schools.

One coach said he was troubled by the fact that the participation fee would allow the state to further place the onus of public education on parents.

Ulla Smit, a parent of four children currently attending Piedmont schools, said she approves of the participation fee proposal. She said that her son Christian, who plays varsity soccer at Piedmont, has benefited immensely from the tutelage of Peter Hayton, who has guided the soccer team to two straight NCS finals appearances.

“Our kids are getting fantastic coaching and great life experience. That’s well worth $325, and even that’s a bargain,” Smit said.

The Post contacted three other parents. All said they would support instituting a participation fee. One parent said that public schools don’t typically require students to pay to participate in sports. Another said that a $350 participation fee is “right on the edge of what seems reasonable.”

Board approval

Principal Booker fully supports the coaching stipend proposal and says he has submitted it for approval by Constance Hubbard, the Piedmont School District Superintendent. According to Lamarche and Menke, the proposal will be presented to the school board on either May 14 or May 28, with hopes that it will be instituted this coming fall.

A catalogue of things I found in an old notebook (circa Spring 2007)

Screenprinting, puppetry, graphic designs, new religions, head-banging frustrations, convergences, connections, directions, forces, sexual positions, cover letters, resumes, delusions, interviews, questions, punk lyrics, broken verse, findings, abstracts, experiments (physical, sexual, spiritual), meteorological forecasts, discovered texts, ephemera (ACT/SAT, blood, urinalysis, CT scan, MRI, spinal taps, economics exams, etc.), logos, moral theses, philosophical musings, violin concertos, antique photographs, novellas, recipes, manifestos, clothing designs, dictatorial mutterings, mix-tape track lists, the names and nicknames of all the pets you've ever owned, heart-breaking autobiographies, self-portraits, dear-john letters, diary contents, apologies, admissions, dismissals, regrets, one-liners, conundrums, narrative cycles, stock markets, inadequacies, achievements, ideas for new cereals, architectural schematics, hiccups, financial statements, porno film treatments, dramedy scripts, cultural critiques, villanelles, gardening tips, notions, daydreams, abiding dislikes, triathlon training regimens, children's scribbles, battle cries, cubist renderings wrapped in tinfoil, plans for a Saturday night, sculptures, feelings, staged photography, dietary guidelines, absurdist dramas, facebook profiles, topo-maps, diagrams, homilies, business models, head-shots, stencils, country tunes, disappearances, vituperations, political diatribes, knock-knock jokes, double-blind studies, police sketches, text messages, justifications, receipts, hero mythologies, laundry detergents, the people you've never met but wish you had, urges, confessions, suggestions, countdowns, drunken declarations, obituaries, rulebooks, pamphlets, the scales (both major and minor), spreadsheets, implications, denials, crossword puzzles, facts, figures, bad directions, pork belly futures, peer-reviewed journals, phone calls, hymns, conspiracy theories, castigations, accusations, quotations, assumptions, forced confessions, refusals, stained-glass windows, proposals, commercials, coupons, enormous let-downs, sage advice, life lessons, still lifes, quarterly reports, prayers, op-eds, mission statements, jargon, random observations, headlines, yearnings, leftovers, lost loves, final words, excuses...

"The Class" exposes the heart of the new multi-cultural France

(The following article appeared in the Piedmont Post.)

Unless you’re a teacher, a student or a lazy fly, what happens inside a school’s walls is largely a mystery. The Class, a French film nominated for an Academy Award for best Foreign Feature and recently released in America, succeeds in tearing down the critical fourth wall of a Parisian middle school, allowing a fascinating look at the dynamics of class and culture in modern France.

The original French title of The Class is roughly translated as “between the walls,” which is in some ways a more appropriate title than the one it received on this side of the Atlantic. After French language teacher François Marin (played by François Begeaudeau, a former teacher who wrote the screenplay and the novel on which The Class is based) and his colleagues pass through the entrance of their school on the first day of class, the film never once strays outside the walls of the institution.

Indeed, all we need to know about France’s increasingly multicultural population is revealed in the microcosm of Marin’s classroom. His students’ heritages lie in the myriad of former French colonies, nearby European countries and other international students. There’s Nassim from Morocco, Carl from the Caribbean, Boubacar and Souleymane from Mali, Esmerelda from Tunisia, Wei from China, Damien from Portugal, etc. Then there are just regular and not so regular kids from Paris’s 20th quartier.

The Class focuses its attention on the students’ identity crises and their struggles to co-exist with each other, the institution and Mr. Marin. Marin obviously cares deeply about his students, but whether it’s for drama’s sake or just a character flaw, he spends much less time teaching than he does trying to understand his kids and what makes them tick. He uses the Socratic method to draw his students out and engage them in the French language. He is also mildly racist, culturally insensitive and divides his focus unequally among his students.

Souleymane, Marin’s most troublesome student, is the catalyst for much of the film’s drama. He’s a slacker and a fire starter, but he’s also capable of some quality work when he bothers to do it. Souleymane’s behavior becomes increasingly disruptive, and when Marin calls two of his female students “skanks,” Souleymane erupts in hot-headed fervor, partly to defend his classmates and partly because he simply can’t control himself. That leads to a tense standoff between Marin and his students at recess and a disciplinary hearing where Souleymane’s fate will be determined.

The Class is filmed in documentary style using either very tight close-ups or from a vantage point recalling CCTV when recess is out. Those cinematographic choices, combined with the fact that we never leave the walls of the school, create intense emotional proximity between the characters themselves as well as the audience. By the end of the film, we feel like we personally know every student in the class, even the saddest, most quiet among them.

Delightfully bizarre Coraline a must see

(The following article appeared in the Piedmont Post.)

“Handmade” is an adjective that’s increasingly inapplicable to American animated films. Coraline bucks the computer generated trend popularized by Pixar for a more palpable medium, stop-motion animation. You might even be tempted to reach out and touch the snapdragons, dancing mice or bat-winged Scottie dogs because everything is presented in eye-popping stereoscopic 3D, fusing high- and low-tech with stunning results.

Coraline, based on the novel of the same name by fabulist Neil Gaiman and directed by stop-motion maestro Henry Selick, doesn’t rely solely on visual spectacle. It’s an endlessly creative and inventive film populated by outlandish characters and powered by a post-modern fairy-tale plot. It’s also one of the most delightfully bizarre films to appear on the big screen since Selick’s seminal film The Nightmare Before Christmas and a must see for kids of all ages.

Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) is a hip and intelligent single child, but she gets fed up when her blasé, workaholic parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) relocate the family into the Pink Palace apartments in rainy, muddy, sunless Ashland, Oregon. She soon meets her new oddball neighbors. First there’s Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), a strange, talkative boy who lives nearby and collects banana slugs for fun. Sergi Alexander Bobinsky (Ian McShane), a svelt-legged, barrel-chested and towering Russian acrobat, trains a troupe of dancing mice in the upstairs apartment. Downstairs live Miss Forcible (Dawn French) and Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders), aging bordello dancers who appreciate the finer things in life, like vintage saltwater taffy, their Scottie dogs and, strangely, taxidermy.

Coraline soon discovers that the Pink Palace’s strangest inhabitants exist in a parallel world on the other side of a small hidden door in the living room. In the this bizarro world are her “other” mother and “other” father, who outwardly resemble her real parents but never work, endlessly dote upon and entertain her and actually take the time to decorate the house and cook delicious meals. Oh, and one other thing: they have buttons for eyes. In fact, everybody in the “other” world has buttons for eyes, except Coraline.

In the beginning, Coraline is unsure whether the alternate world exists only in her dreams, but it soon becomes apparent that it’s no dream. In fact, it might even be a suitable alternative to her dull real life and boring real parents. But there’s a steep price to pay for moving into the “other” world: her “other” mother demands Coraline sew buttons into her eyes. Things gets even frightening when she learns the “other” mother is actually a witch who feeds on the souls and love of children and that she’s imprisoned Coraline’s real parents. With the help of a talking cat and a trinket from Misses Forible and Spink, brave Coraline sets everything right.

As entertaining as it is, Coraline does have a few snags. For one thing, the plot can be difficult to piece together in a single viewing. Some scenes late in the movie might frighten younger viewers, but there didn’t appear to be any terrified youngsters at the showing this reviewer attended. Apart from those concerns, Coraline is a fantastic, magical journey through the looking glass, and the slew of computer animated films that are churned out annually can’t compare with it for creativity.

Enter the Gonzo: meeting Hunter S. Thompson

(The following article appeared in the Piedmont Post.)

The new documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, is an entertaining and edifying entrée into the decadent and depraved life of the protean writer/journalist who proved that modern-day writers could still be celebrities and inspired a new generation to write vigorously.

Narrated with laconic pathos by Johnny Depp and directed by Alex Gibney, Gonzo chronicles Thompson’s rise from a lower-middle class, anti-authoritarian youth in Louisville, Kentucky, to one of the foremost journalists of the past 50 years. The movie principally focuses on the decade 1965 to 1975, when Thompson produced the bulk of his best work and rose to stardom as an influential and well-paid writer for Rolling Stone magazine.

His first big break came in 1965 with an assignment from the Nation to write an article about the Hell’s Angels, the rebel motorcycle club from Oakland. That article became the book that launched his career. In 1970, Thompson and crazed illustrator Ralph Steadman, heavily narcotized and boozed, covered the Kentucky Derby. The resulting article was the first piece of Gonzo journalism, a reckless offshoot of the “New Journalism,” of which Thompson himself was arguably the only practitioner.

The film details Thompson’s attempt to run for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado, the insane exploits of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (unfortunately depicted with footage from the eponymous 1998 film starring Depp as Thompson), and his bold, no-holds-barred, reporting of the riot-torn 1972 presidential election, pitting Richard Nixon against George McGovern, with the Vietnam War as a backdrop.

At times, Gonzo feels cobbled together like plywood – an amalgam of disparate parts that constitute a not entirely appealing whole, which may be a directorial decision to create a piece of art that effectively mirrors its subject.

The film is filled with interviews with Thompson’s friends, coworkers and subjects, including a long list of political figures. Their testimonies, combined with footage and previous documentaries of Thompson, create a vivid though not entirely endearing portrait of the wily writer.

He is even credited with nearly single-handedly convincing the American public to elect Jimmy Carter in 1977.

Gonzo admirably captures Thompson’s kaleidoscopic personality. He was a warm friend and a writer of well-researched, well-written, passionate journalism. He was also confrontational, irrational, and prone to destructive behavior. He developed a dependence not just on drugs and adrenaline, but also on the celebrity he created for himself as a journalist. In looking back at the depth of his talent, Thompson's inability to catch a second literary-breath should be edifying for anyone entering the field of journalism today.

Sadly, the world today is in great need of the vitriolic intelligence and rigorous investigation of Thompson. His untimely suicide, which Gibney handles cleanly to create the film’s most touching moments, leaves a major void in contemporary American journalism. Thompson was quoted as saying, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Well, the going has gone entirely weird, and the best of the weird should consider professional careers in journalism. Maybe this film will convince them of their vocation.

Bagging Mt. Tam before it’s too late

(This article appeared in the 17 June issue of the Piedmont Post.)

The proposed closure of nearly 80-percent of California’s 279 State Parks after Labor Day this year is tantamount to a doomsday prophecy for the state’s legion of avid hikers, outdoor enthusiasts and even casual nature peepers. One park potentially on the chopping block is Mt. Tamalpais State Park, home to the most salient geographical feature in the immediate Bay Area. Mt. Tam rises to 2,574 feet and is accessible via a maze of trails.

The Matt Davis Trail from the Bootjack picnic runs along the mountain’s cool southern flank and passes through varied terrain resplendent with shady mountain streams, haunting stands of tightly packed young redwoods and not a few salamanders. You pick up the trail at the north-eastern end of the picnic area and tread along relatively flat terrain, emerging intermittently from the forests of redwood, Douglas fir, canyon oak and California bay onto chaparral ridgelines of manzanita, coyote brush and dense chamise. All four river crosses along the way are crossed by well-maintained wooden bridges, and you might consider lingering for a time in the sublime tranquility of those places.

Take a right at the junction with the Nora Trail to continue on the Matt Davis, and coming upon a fork in the trail after crossing Fern Creek, bear left onto the Hoo-Koo-E-koo Trail. The Hoo-Koo soon crosses the Hogback Fire Road and then continues along the 1,200 foot ridgeline until it meets the Old Railroad Grade Fire Road. Roughly .2 miles up that road, you’ll encounter a trail junction connecting the Old Railroad and the Hoo-Koo-E-koo fire roads and, less obviously, the Vic Haun Trail, which leads off from the trail post between the two fire roads. Thus begins the tough part of the hike: a gravel-lined trail switchbacking the 1,120 feet ascent to the peak with sun-weathered southern exposure and little shade provided by the surrounding chaparral. On the upside, you’ll be treated to increasingly stunning views of almost the entire Bay Area from a unique perspective on your way up. The Vic Haun terminates at its intersection with the Temelpa Trail, and the Temelpa covers the steepest part of the climb, but the payoff at the top is well worth the effort.

After a rest at the top, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the Vic Haun on your way down the Temelpa. Layering is probably a good idea for this hike, as the Matt Davis wends through a moist, windy and chilly environment, while the south-eastern side of the mountain can be quite warm, and you’ll certainly work up a sweat on the ascent.

Bootjack to Mt. Tam

Distance: less than 10-miles round trip

Elevation gain: approximately 1,200 feet

Difficulty: 3 out of 5

Time commitment: Four hours and thirty minutes at a good pace with one break at the pinnacle, plus two hours total driving time.

Kid friendly?: Yes

Dog friendly?: No