I have personally interviewed and been directly involved in the hiring of hundreds of teachers, and quite a few administrators. Hiring a football coach, though, was a new experience for me.

Actually, I wasn’t closely involved until the field of 49 applicants had been narrowed to four finalists. Our Athletic Director, Jim Sherard, working closely with the high school principal, Paul Waller, led that process. And last week we named Doc Gamble, the coach at Withrow High School, as our new varsity head football coach.

There was certainly a great deal of community interest in the selection. I believe people expect us to be the experts when it comes to hiring teachers, and we have worked hard over many years to develop a very structured process to ensure we are recruiting the best teaching candidates and then hiring the individuals with the greatest likelihood of being successful in the classroom. But when it comes to football, everybody’s an expert (except me…I admit it). As the different rounds of interviews were going on, our fans were offering lots of input, as well as making predictions about the outcome.

Some fans were frustrated when it seemed the process was going slowly. But there were reasons why it took the time it did. All four of the finalists are outstanding football coaches. But we were also hiring a full-time employee. That meant four sets of discussions about how the total employment situation for that individual might be structured. It needed to be a job that served the needs of the district and its students, and was also a good match for that person’s experience and career goals.

I’d like to explain what I mean by “total employment situation.” The football coaching job is actually a supplemental contract to the person’s full-time employment with our district. And a coach frequently has other supplemental contracts as well, connected to other sports or other duties. As we talked with all four finalists, and discussed what that total set of contracts might look like for each one of them, those discussions took a lot of time.

We also did a lot of work making reference checks and phone calls. We had said at the outset that we were going to be prudent and careful with the process, and we were.

I was very pleased we were able to hire one of the four finalists. Doc is a terrific football coach. But he’ll be doing much more for us than coaching football. His full-time job is Manager of Student Services. He’ll be involved at the high school in student attendance and tardies, detentions, building usage schedules, and building security. (This is a new position, but not an increase in the number of employees, because we restructured the duties of an employee who was retiring.) Doc will also serve as assistant athletic director, a position that had been vacant. Also, just for the rest of this school year, he’ll supervise the school’s athletic training facility. But we’ll need to find another person for that position before football starts next season. As you can imagine, he’s going to be very busy.

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I was honored that last week the Fairfield Board of Education asked me to stay on as superintendent for three more years. We have a wonderful school district in Fairfield, with a great staff and 10,000 energetic, enthusiastic kids. I am proud to be a part of it.

Published in the Fairfield Echo, Jan. 24, 2008.