Letter to trustees on hiring decision

My name is Willie Roche, and I serve as the head boys track and field coach at Whitefish High School. I am writing to formally express my deep disappointment in the board's recent decision to trump the administration’s recommendation to hire Addy Connelly as assistant track & field coach. 

Coach Connelly went through the application and interview process that our district has had as status quo for many years, and many coaching hires. After the interview process, the hiring committee unanimously determined that Coach Connelly was the correct person for the job, so we recommended her for hire. That recommendation came from myself, head girls coach Matt Beckwith, Activities Director Aric Harris, Assistant Principal Hallie Koppang, and Superintendent Dave Means. Every person hired by this board to make these kinds of decisions agreed: Addy Connelly was the right choice. 

Coach Connelly is already a teacher in this district, our head volleyball coach, and a respected leader within our school community. With her being a teacher in 2 buildings in this district, and her extensive coaching experience of our high school girls, she has a major role in students’ lives in this district from their first years to their last. She is exactly what our program needed. 

What happened at the March 17 board meeting was, in a word, wrong. With no discussion, no explanation, and no transparency, the board chose to override the collective judgment of every administrator and coach involved in this process. It felt as though conversations were had behind closed doors about something that should be public knowledge. School boards are meant to make informed decisions based on the systemic processes put in place, and this time, the board decided to disregard that process, and therefore make an uninformed decision. 

I want to be direct: when a school board disregards the recommendations of the superintendent, building administrators, an activities director, and both head coaches, it sends a clear message — that the people hired to make these decisions cannot be trusted to make them. As one of those people previously trusted to make those decisions, this is disappointing and disheartening, especially given the historic success of our track & field program. 

The board owes an explanation — not because the law requires it, but because the students, the staff, the parents, the community, and Coach Connelly deserve one. Our season has already begun, and our athletes are without a coach they should have had from day one. 

 — Willie Roche, head boys track and field coach