Carty, parent group battled before reaching final truce

The Mead High School football players will show up Monday and start lifting weights and preparing for the season without knowing who will be on the sidelines to guide them.

Longtime coach Sean Carty resigned last week after he was fired in March but had his job restored in May after a hearing examiner ruled that enough ambiguity existed in his contract to undo his termination.

Carty said his resignation on Monday had nothing to do with the concerted effort by a group of parents to have him removed. The simple answer, he said, was that he waited until he could decide his future on his own terms.

“Parents haven’t changed. They always want the best for their kids,” Carty said. “All of it tied together, I can’t say there was no effect. But, it was a good time to say, ‘Family. Do we want to keep doing football?’ We all decided that it was a good time to make a break.”

Athletic director John Barrington said he’s already posted the position and hopes to start interviewing prospective coaches on June 22 and 23. He, too, said he’s not fearful how Carty’s 14-year run ended will affect the school’s ability to replace him.

“It’s not ideal timing, but I’m not concerned,” Barrington said. “I think we are going to get some interest. It’s a good place to be.”

Parent Greg Bade was the most vocal of a group that brought a list of concerns about Carty to school officials. He said he did not consider Carty’s resignation to be any sort of vindication or victory.

“If he feels like he left under his terms, more power to him,” Bade said. “It’s sad all the way around. The only winners, I say, will be the kids. They will bring in a new coach, get this program infused with new life and move on.

“Every program goes through that. It’s just a life cycle.”

‘Not stop here’

While both sides have declared a truce, records obtained by The Spokesman-Review show that Carty’s resignation brought an end to a determined six-month struggle between parents who felt like the school district was ignoring their concerns and employee representatives hell-bent on preventing those outside the program from dictating terms for its members.

After one of the parents, who was an attorney, formalized a list of complaints – complete with sworn statements – the school hired its own attorney to investigate.

Once the school’s attorney review was completed, retiring principal Mark St. Clair fired Carty in March for what he claimed was Carty’s failure to follow the school’s code of conduct.

But with the help of a team of attorneys from the Mead Extracurricular Employees Association, Carty was reinstated last month.

“As an association, we feel very strongly that the message this sends to our coaches and to the community is more egregious than any of the unfounded and misunderstood allegations against Coach Carty,” the May 19 statement reads. “If a small, yet vocal, group of parents can manipulate the process to this degree, and do it without a modicum threshold of proof, it will not stop here.”

But Bade called the MECA’s argument “illogical.”

“That’s almost like saying you can’t complain about the police or fire departments because they have unions,” Bade said. Carty “was a public employee. He was responsible for leading young men.”

Parents are not trying to conduct witch hunts, Bade said.

“Hey, we are stakeholders. We are parents and we should have input,” Bade said. “Maybe (MECA) didn’t like the method we used. But we followed the procedures.”

‘Battle these lunatics’

The parents brought a list of interactions with Carty, which included a player who felt like he was forced to choose between sports; a player who played in a game after returning too soon from a serious injury and prompted the school to self-report an apparent WIAA violation; and another player who was pulled from class to discuss a football meeting, which brought complaints from his parents.

As the storm outside the program gathered, Carty informed his assistant coaches late last year of the parents’ attempts to remove him.

“So far it has been veiled threats and chest-beating from a few parents,” Carty wrote in a Dec. 12 email. “My administrators have told me to keep cool until the group comes forward.”

He added: “We all feel strongly about the program and are not going to stand for people on the outside with hidden agendas – telling us what to do.”

Some of the parents then met with school administrators on Dec. 18 and Carty said they presented “zero specifics.” He also said the parents barred coaches from talking to their children unless first obtaining permission from their attorney.

“I am still not worried as I know I have the law on my side,” Carty wrote on Dec. 19. “I am still committed to getting this staff together and (do) a better PR job to insure that we cannot be called out.

“I have seen enough evidence in previous cases around the country and in this case to stand fast and battle these lunatics.”

Under questioning by Richard Kaiser, the attorney hired by the school district, Carty said he regretted calling the parents lunatics. Kaiser then asked Carty if he felt he violated the school’s code which requires the “highest ethical and moral conduct.”

“Mr. Carty refused to answer my questions even though he had no problem denying that his other conduct violated the Code,” Kaiser wrote.

The attorney asked the coach a second time. “Mr. Carty suddenly claimed I was asking him a ‘legal question.’ ” Kaiser wrote. “Mr. Carty still refused to answer my question.”

Fired and reinstated

About two weeks after receiving Kaiser’s report, St. Clair met with Carty to discuss the reports from both attorneys.

The next day, on March 27, St. Clair informed Carty he was being let go because he did not successfully complete the 2014-15 football season and that “you did not meet the code of conduct expectations set forth” in the bargaining agreement.

That decision was appealed by the employees’ association, which issued its own report on May 19. That report ripped St. Clair’s decision and chastised him for not allowing the athletic director to conduct the initial investigation.

“MECA feels that this unprecedented process has been poorly handled and even mishandled from the very beginning,” the association wrote. “Coach Carty was singled out in a blatant witch hunt perpetrated by a small minority of disgruntled parents and facilitated by an inept administration’s inability to do its job properly.”

The association said that it would have supported the firing had it been warranted.

“This has never been done to one of our coaches for such trivial, fabricated or blatantly distorted charges,” they wrote. “But this is so patently unfair, we cannot sit by idly and let it happen.”

Among their list of concerns, the association representatives said they were left out of the process.

“After we did get the investigator’s report, we did a thorough investigation into each item,” they wrote. “We found that 5 of the 7 are completely false and the others are either misrepresented, or blown out of proportion.”

They argued that Carty had successfully completed the season and that St. Clair had misapplied the “Coaches Code of Conduct.”

“It is an association document; we adopted it, we modified it, we understand it better than Mr. St. Clair,” they wrote.

Three days later, hearing examiner Pam Veltri sided with the employee association, and reinstated Carty “due to ambiguity” between the non-renewal language of the collective bargaining agreement and the interpretation by the school district.

Among her additional list of recommendations, Veltri said the school district should develop a protocol that includes making a record any time a parent comes to the athletic director with a complaint.

Bade said the parents are hopeful that this minor step will help avoid any future situation from spiraling out of control.

“That should have been in place years ago,” he said. “One of the most disappointing things, other than the one email, there has been no communication with the parents and no action to inform us that they take these things seriously.”

However, Jared Hoadley, executive director of student services, would not say if the district will follow Veltri’s recommendation and instruct school officials to document their interactions with parents.

“I’m not going to comment on personnel issues,” he said.