Previous school board approves volunteer football coach contract, new board begins
About 50 people attended The Lakeside/Somers School Board meeting on May 15 to discuss the future of the school’s football program with the previous board of trustees before the induction of the new trustees, Sam Bagley and John Hollensteiner. The previous board’s final action was to approve a contract for Randy Gilpin to serve as volunteer football coach.
“This is the first time our coaching contract has been given prior to having teacher and principal contracts in place,” Courtney Shaeffer said. We haven’t done our budget yet and it seemed to be out of order.
Shaeffer was on the board prior to this year and is the new chairperson; Tim Rogge is the new vice-chair.
The unusually large public turnout was due to concerns about whether or not the district would have a sports program since the $405,000 levy failed earlier this month.
“Teachers had concerns that the past board was pushing ahead with the volunteer coach position ahead of principle and teacher contracts,” superintendent Casey Love said. “They had concern pushing forward with sports rather than doing contracts for sports in August.”
Although the new board has not created a balanced budget for the upcoming school year or hired a new superintendent yet, Rogge said that those tasks are in the works and will be reviewed by committees this month.
Applications for the district’s superintendent position are in and the board will also be reviewing applications this month.
“I think the new board will make some good choices with the money they do have to provide the best education they can,” Love said.
Since the budget for the district has not been made, it is yet to be determined precisely what the future holds for the sports program.
Love said that Gilpin was a volunteer coach last year with Lakeside Elementary School’s physical education teacher Mitch Brinkman as the paid coach.
Brinkman declined to comment on the current state of the district’s sports program.
“If anything, Randy will be a volunteer coach in football,” Love said.
In other Lakeside/Somers district news, in last week’s edition of the West Shore News, Mike Schlegel was quoted as saying “The teachers that make $80,000 can take a freeze so that the ones making $27,000 can catch up, that’s what’s fair, that’s what I’ve learned from six years of being on the board.” However, the highest salaried teacher in the district with a standard 187-day contract is actually $59,270.