The Coaching Edge
Fabrizio Gowdy | December 5, 2019 | Sports
A key component to the success of any team is a dedicated coach who knows what they are doing. Stanton College Preparatory School employs teachers, parents, and career coaches to coach its 26 sports teams. Many of these coaches manage to put together successful seasons, despite facing a number of challenges, including low stipends and being forced to juggle their personal lives and teaching activities with their coaching duties.
Coach Healey
“If there is a late game the same day that my students took a test then there is a good chance I won't be grading those papers that night,” said Stanton varsity girls soccer coach and teacher Brian Heggood, who is in his twenty-first year of coaching at Stanton.
In contrast, most private schools, some of whom compete against Stanton, are able to hire full-time coaches who specialize in a particular sport. These highly sought after coaches include Episcopal School of Jacksonville head football Coach Mark Brunell, a former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback and three time Pro-Bowler, and recently retired former Bolles School head football Coach Corky Rogers, who won 11 state championships in his 47 years of coaching high school football.
These coaches earn a higher salary than they would at any Duval County Public School, and in the case of Coach Brunell, do not have to teach a class, meaning they are able to focus entirely on their team. Private schools like Episcopal and Bolles are also able to offer some of their coaches on-campus housing, which is not an option for public schools.
Low pay is a major issue facing DCPS coaches. Data made public by DCPS indicates all coaches receive a coaching stipend, varying from approximately $1,200 for “minor” sports such as cross country to about $4,700 for “major” sports like football. These stipends have not been raised since the late 1990s — over two decades ago. Due to inflation, coaches who began coaching in the year 2000 have seen the value of their stipend decrease by about 33 percent.
Many coaches work long hours outside of games and regular practices, performing tasks ranging from organizing offseason conditioning to doing team laundry; yet, they are only paid for regular season games and practices (with the exception of Spring football). All other hours they put in are usually uncompensated.
“There are times I start doing the math and I have to stop because it’s depressing,” said Stanton Athletic Director and flag football Coach Chris Crider. He says it is disheartening to see coaches paid so little.
The Florida Times-Union recently estimated the average pay for a DCPS high school head football coach at $63 per week. For 10 to 15 hours of work a week, that comes out to an hourly rate below minimum wage.
Coach Fleming
The problems Coach Crider identifies cause additional problems for coaches who find themselves in the postseason. According to Stanton boys soccer Coach Robert Fleming, being a successful coach in Duval County can lead to a diminished hourly wage.
“For the playoffs, I'm driving to games, I’m putting in time, I'm having to spend money on food and gas, and I’m not getting paid for any of this,” said Coach Fleming, who has coached at Stanton since the school began offering athletics in 1990.
Coaches who advance into the playoffs do not receive compensation for their postseason hours. According to Coach Fleming, the longer a team stays alive in the playoffs, the more hours their coach is working for the same amount of money, meaning their pay per hour is actually decreasing.
Some school districts, such as St. Johns County Schools, determine their coaches’ salaries based on the number of games they win, but in DCPS, a coach’s success has no bearing on their paycheck. A coach whose team wins the state championship receives the same stipend as a coach whose team doesn’t win a single game, so there seems to be no immediate financial incentive for coaches to win games or be successful.
Duval Teachers United, the local teachers union, is at the forefront of the push for higher wages for its members, including coaches. DTU negotiates salaries, leave, and working conditions with the school board, but DTU president Mrs. Terry Brady claims the school board has been unwilling to raise stipends.
“We have put stipends on the table every year at negotiations and the district has basically turned it down,” said Brady. She says Florida’s state legislature bears responsibility as well, because it has failed to appropriate the funds necessary to raise stipends.
“The Florida legislature has given Duval County very little money to increase anything,” said Brady. “The legislature is the one who needs to be held accountable. They need to generate extra revenue.”
This culminates into a difficult situation for athletic directors trying to fill coaching vacancies. Attracting good coaches to public schools is not easy when there are other, higher paying options for the best coaches. According to Coach Crider, DCPS loses many coaches to areas offering higher salaries. Former Raines High School head football Coach Welton Coffey is a prime example of this phenomenon. After much success at Raines in the early 2000s, Coach Coffey left Jacksonville for a head coaching job at Camden County High School, in nearby southern Georgia, which offered him a significantly higher salary.
According to 2016 Florida Times-Union research, public schools throughout Georgia offer far higher stipends, with the average Georgia assistant coach making more than most DCPS head coaches. Unlike Florida, Georgia has a state income tax, which is part of the reason Georgia is able to pay its teachers and coaches higher salaries than their Florida counterparts.
Coach Micheal Healy, Stanton’s head football coach since 2015, previously ran the football program at Bay High School, a public school in Panama City, Florida, where he earned $82,000 a year and did not have to teach a class.
“That area of the state is kind of the last bastion where they pay coaches that kind of money,” said Coach Healy.
According to Coach Crider, in addition to seeing many of its coaches leave to take higher paying jobs elsewhere, DCPS also loses coaches to club teams and refereeing jobs, both of which pay a higher hourly rate than public school coaching stipends.
“It is just hard for public schools to attract quality coaching talent,” said Coach Crider. The pay, conditions, and hours DCPS offers cannot compete, especially when it comes to younger coaches trying to support a family.
According to Coach Crider, public schools have to deal with a lot more regulatory “red tape” and bureaucracy, because public schools must work as a collective unit, and policy is administered from the top down, whereas private schools are individual entities who only have to worry about themselves.
The number of coaches a team can employ is a good example of regulations manifesting themselves into on-the-field challenges. The Bolles School’s athletics website lists 19 varsity football coaches, but Stanton’s varsity squad is limited by DCPS regulations to a maximum of five coaches.
DCPS limits the number of coaches a team can have based on the number of athletes, a restriction that does not affect private schools.
“We can only pay coaches based on the pot [of money] we have to pay them,” said DCPS Director of Athletics Tammie K. Talley, who claimed the regulation is there for the safety of athletes.
Not everyone agrees private schools are more flexible and free from regulatory restrictions. Bolles Athletic Director Matthew Morris pushed back on this notion.
“I think we pretty much follow the same rules as most public schools do,” said Morris. He claimed that Bolles has a hierarchical structure comparable to DCPS bureaucracy.
“I can’t just wave a wand and change a policy. I’ve got my own board, it’s just a board for just Bolles,” said Morris.
Regardless of all the difficulties facing DCPS coaches, at Stanton, there seems to be hope. Some, like Coach Heggood, dispute the idea private schools have any sort of edge.
“Plenty of public schools have been extremely successful in many sports,” said Coach Heggood, who speaks from experience regarding this success. In 2017, he coached the Stanton girls soccer team to the 3A state title game.
However, other coaches, like Coach Healy, see the current coaching pay situation as unsustainable.
“It would be awfully hard to get exceptional coaches to coach in Duval County without paying them adequately,” said Coach Healy. “There’s no incentive, other than doing it for fun.”
Coach Fleming shares similar doubts about the sustainability of the current situation.
“There’s going to come a point where you are going to have to raise the stipends, or you are just not going to get quality coaches,” said Coach Fleming.
Like Coach Healy, Coach Fleming also cites a pure love for coaching as the primary motivation for most DCPS coaches.
“The pay is terrible, but we love the sport, we love the kids, and we love what it does for them. If you have a good coach you can overcome all that stuff. If you get a coach who cares, you got something special,” said Coach Fleming.
Even DTU president Brady is somewhat optimistic. This is the first year DCPS Superintendent Dr. Diana Green will be negotiating salaries, and Brady said she is hopeful there might be change.
There is not complete agreement over what extent, if any, the issues facing public school coaches make a difference on the field. For now, Stanton’s coaches seem to be managing these problems, but in the long term, there is little debate among Stanton coaches that changes need to be made.