School officials hone coach hiring process
NEW CANAAN — High school officials continue to hone the process of background checks and certifying coaches after an incident this spring cast doubt on the effectiveness of the process.
“We will do the social media background check, which we weren’t doing in the past.” Jay Egan, New Canaan High School athletic director
“I know we had an issue this year with a coach. Has there been any talk about additional screening or any change in procedure or anything to that effect?” Board of Education member Jennifer Richardson asked New Canaan High School Athletic Director Jay Egan during a meeting last week.
Richardson was referring to assistant basketball coach Jose Amor, who was charged in March with possession of heroin in Stamford. Amor stepped down after his arrest, but the district later discovered he passed the background check when he was hired even though his certification was expired.
Gary Kass, the schools’ director of human resources, said the district’s background checks, conducted by North Carolina-based Background Information Bureau, report county, state and federal records, and check the National Sex Offender Registry and international records.
But the screenings did not include Google searches until recently.
“We will do the social media background check, which we weren’t doing in the past,” Egan said. In addition, a personal reference check will be conducted for all new hires by someone outside the athletic department “to add another check” to the process, Egan said.
Egan also described a new database offered by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference that allows athletic and human resource departments to view a list of all coaches and assistants and their recent certifications.
According to Egan and members of the Board of Education, these certifications may have a lag time of up to eight weeks, at which point the certification is backdated to when the paperwork was received.
“Oftentimes, because it’s a state agency, they can have wait time just for paperwork,” Board of Education Chairwoman Dionna Carlson said. “By having all those boxes checked, we can assure that they would’ve been certified, it’s just we’re waiting for the state’s paperwork to come through.”
The backdating is necessary to avoid coaches from missing parts of the season while waiting for their certifications. In addition, Egan and Superintendent of Schools Bryan Luizzi said the cost of maintaining an up-to-date certification — which can cost more than $700 — may also be prohibitive to some assistant coaches.
“This is a problem statewide. The turnover of coaches everywhere, the bottleneck of the paperwork, the availability of courses people need to take,” Superintendent of Schools Bryan Luizzi said. “We’re talking about folks who might be working for 25 cents an hour to work with our kids. Then we’re asking them to pay all this money up front.”